Van der Poel: "I Was Riding 650 Watts and Still Couldn't Follow" — The Numbers Behind Another Flanders Defeat

Mathieu van der Poel delivered one of the most remarkable post-race statements in recent cycling history on Sunday evening, revealing that he was hitting 650 watts on the final ascent of the Tour of Flanders Oude Kwaremont and still could not hold Tadej Pogačar's wheel. The number — which at Van der Poel's racing weight of approximately 75 kilograms equates to around 8.67 watts per kilogram — is a figure that would comfortably win most professional races in the world. On Sunday, at the highest level of cycling, it was not enough to stay on the wheel of the Slovenian phenomenon.

"I was riding 650 watts and I still couldn't hold his wheel," Van der Poel said in the mixed zone at Oudenaarde after finishing third behind Pogačar and Mads Pedersen. "I had one problem: there's a phenomenon riding around. Not just me — the whole peloton was strangled." The Alpecin-Premier Tech captain, who has long been considered among the very best cobbled classics riders in the world, could only watch as Pogačar opened up his devastating gap on the penultimate ascent of the Kwaremont and powered away to a solo victory that left the field 34 seconds adrift at the finish line in Oudenaarde.

The 650-watt figure demands context. For the overwhelming majority of professional cyclists, sustaining such power output for an extended period up a steep berg would represent an absolute maximum effort — the kind of output that leaves riders barely capable of holding a straight line, let alone continuing to accelerate. Van der Poel is not a rider who typically struggles to produce elite power numbers. He is, by any objective measure, one of the strongest Classics riders of his generation, a three-time Paris-Roubaix champion and multiple Monument winner. That such an output was insufficient underlines just how extraordinary Pogačar's performance was on Sunday afternoon.

Van der Poel's Alpecin-Premier Tech team were quick to defend their leader's ride. "It's difficult to call this a defeat," said team director Christoph Roodhooft. "Mathieu did absolutely nothing wrong. He rode an extraordinary race. The problem is that Tadej Pogačar is riding at a level we have never seen before in these races." The sentiment was widely echoed in the peloton, with riders across multiple teams describing Sunday's performance in the Flemish Ardennes as something outside normal parameters — a ride that operated in a different category to what the rest of the field was capable of producing.

For Van der Poel himself, Sunday's result was the latest in a series of encounters with Pogačar in which the Slovenian has consistently emerged on top. The two riders have met at multiple key spring moments in recent years, and while Van der Poel has taken victories at Paris-Roubaix — a race where Pogačar's cobbled experience is less extensive — the Flemish terrain increasingly appears to suit Pogačar's relentless climbing power more precisely than Van der Poel's more all-round explosive profile. "I gave everything I had," Van der Poel said. "When I was on 650 watts and still couldn't hold him, there was nothing more I could do. I had to let him go."

The focus now shifts to Paris-Roubaix on April 12, where Van der Poel will target a record-equalling fourth consecutive victory. The Hell of the North presents a very different challenge to the Ronde, one that plays more to Van der Poel's strengths in the flat, brutally hard sectors of pavé that stretch across northern France. "Roubaix is now my only obsession," he said on Sunday. "I want that four-peat. That is the number that matters now." Whether 650 watts will be enough at Roubaix — and whether Pogačar, racing these roads for only the second time, can match him on the cobbles of the north — is the question that will define the defining race of the 2026 spring.

The data will fascinate cycling analysts for months. If Van der Poel was indeed producing 8.67 W/kg sustained over the Kwaremont and being dropped, then Pogačar's output in those crucial moments was something that may never be publicly confirmed. The Slovenian world champion does not routinely share power data. But the testimony of the rider who was watching his rear tyre disappear up the road — a rider producing numbers that would flatten almost any other professional in the peloton — may be the most eloquent testament to what we witnessed on Sunday afternoon in Flanders.

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