Classics Wrap: What’s In a Record?

With a brief pause before the Giro d’Italia, I want to bid the Spring Classics goodbye. Not with a tiresome review of what happened, which you already know, and which (on the men’s side) was so incredibly scripted that it barely merited much discussion in real time. (Women’s entire classics season was [fire emoji].)

The only thing that struck me about the Men’s major races was how Mathieu van der Poel was actually making headway towards some all-time victory records, which is such an odd thing for a guy who just turned 29. I love the guy and we all saw him coming along as a potentially big deal, but… the all-time cobbles winner? He is just now becoming a dominant force in these races, and he is (ahem) already 29. You know the internet meme about “he is Him,” where someone is anointed an almost religious status, or in sci fi terms, the one who was promised, or some such thing?

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Mathieu van der Poel is not Him. [Uncle Eddy is still around to remind us of this.] Full on Him designation looks more like what Tadej Pogačar assumed when he won two Tours de France and a pair of Monuments by age 22 (he’s up to six monuments now at ripe old 25). That’s what Him status looks like. Even with Jonas Vingegaard hounding him all summer, Pogačar is on course to blow away his share of records by the time he reaches van der Poel’s current age, to say nothing of the end of Pogi’s career/rampage. The mind boggles, in a way it doesn’t for even as wonderful a rider as van der Poel.

And yet here is the Dutchman, Pou-pou’s grandson, already knocking on the doors of history in the spring. A bit more quietly, so too is Pogačar, and maybe to greater effect in the long run. Let’s quickly run through the all-time victory records to help get at what I’m talking about.

The Monuments:

• Milano-San Remo: Eddy Merckx, 7 wins
• Ronde van Vlaanderen: 7 riders with 3 wins
• Paris-Roubaix: Tom Boonen and Roger De Vlaeminck with 4 wins
• Liège-Bastogne-Liège: Merckx, 5 wins
• Il Lombardia: Fausto Coppi with 5 wins

Spring Best of the Rest:

• E3 Prijs/Saxo Bank: Boonen, 5 wins
• Gent-Wevelgem: 6 riders with 3 wins
• Dwars Door Vlaanderen: 14 guys with 2 wins
• Omloop Het Volksblad: 3 riders (including Van Petegem) with 3 wins
• Amstel Gold Race: Jan Raas, 5 wins
• La Flèche Wallonne: Alejandro Valverde, 5 wins

The Other Season Specials:

• Clásica de San Sebastian: Lejarreta and Evenepoel with 3 wins
• Paris-Tours: 4 guys with 3 wins
• Paris-Brussels: Robbie McEwen, 5 wins

The Missing Monument:

• Züri-Metzgete/Championship of Zurich: Heiri Suter, 6 wins

Photo credit should read FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images

How has the Züri-Metzgete not come back? The Swiss classic was discontinued in 2006, just 8 years shy of its 100th birthday. It was frequently paired in May with the Rund um den Henninger Turm for a weekend of classics action and pilsners, away from the glut of races in France and the low countries. Interesting side note from Wikipedia, the original eight recognized major classics were the five monuments plus Paris-Brussels, Paris-Tours (are you sensing a trend here?) and La Flèche Wallonne. Apparently it was a big deal to win them all, into the sixties or later, with Rik Van Looy the only rider to pull off that feat.

Anyway, back to records… it feels like the right number for an all time “most wins of X race” is five. Let’s say a rider’s peak is somewhere around 6 years? More nowadays, and their full careers, assuming both success and no more than normal injuries, is a good dozen years or so. To win a Classic five times in those 12+ years is an amazing feat, worthy of cycling legend. To win more than five feels like something weird is going on.

To parse through what’s an appropriate all-time standard, we have to separate the Monuments from the rest, because of the incentives involved and the long histories. Unlike the non-monuments, everyone shows up wanting to win (or aid in a team victory). Every team shows up every year with its best lineup or something close to it. And this has been true for a century.

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MSR: The double-outlier is Merckx with seven wins at MSR. That’s an insane number of wins at a single race of such difficulty and prestige, but Merckx himself is the outlier anytime you want to talk career achievements. The nature of the race absolutely does not lend itself to domination by a special individual; if anything, MSR is distinguished today by how many riders and types of riders can win. But with the Poggio added in 1960 (and no Cipressa yet), somehow the shape of the race lent itself to Merckxian solo escapes, presumably both up and down the Poggio. Then as now, the race was occasionally won (by Merckx and others) in a bunch sprint or a small-group sprint too. And Jan Raas broke up Merckx’ streak at one point with his own solo victory, meaning Merckx wasn’t doing anything totally unique. He was just better at all of it. I won’t waste a single sentence contemplating who could challenge this record. [wait…]

LBL and Lombardia: My fixture on five being the right number lines up here, with that being the record at Lombardia and Liège. Like the other Momuments, the courses have changed a lot, but these two have always been better for the climbers, relatively speaking. LBL has rarely seen bunch finishes in the post-war era, and the greatest champions are Merckx with five, followed by climbers Moreno Argentin and Alejandro Valverde with four wins. Lombardia has a similar track record, always favoring guys who could climb and limiting the field so that the career wins record could rise to five or more. It’s stuck on five, though, held by Fausto Coppi followed by Alfredo Binda with four and a handful of superstars at three.

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Climbers’ races of this distance reliably favor a smaller number of riders, and it’s almost unthinkable that a domestique-level rider could survive to the finale and then win. I say almost because there are a few odd results like Bruno Landi achieving his only career victory at Lombardia in 1953, but my point is that these races will feature a small number of elites, making it possible for one rider to pile up the trophies if they have that little bit more than their rivals.

With Pogačar’s recent win, he and Remco Evenepoel (only 24) will both have two early career LBL wins to build on, and the battle for the record will hopefully rage on for the next decade… if just once we could get them both through the race in top form. Crashes are obviously one of the major limiting factors in record-setting. Pogi is up to three wins in Lombardia too, with somewhat varying competition at the season’s end. Both of these records seem breakable, but competition is continually on the rise and both races come after hard phases of the calendar, so health will keep even Pogi from going too crazy.

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Flanders and Roubaix: Finally, the cobbled Monuments, Flanders and Roubaix, forever spoken in the same breath, are remarkably different as career-total goals go. Flanders’ record is three career wins — the one van der Poel just matched, prompting me to write this post. It’s such a low number that a super-strong kid can match it before turning 30. It’s not odd that van der Poel did this, especially against varying competition, one of the stories this year. What’s incredibly odd is that nobody else got past that number. I thought Tom Boonen could double it up, given his Flemish roots, his early ascension (first win at age 25), his vanderpoelesque strength (or maybe vdP is Boonenesque?) and his finishing sprint which put him in such control of the finale. But Cancellara mastered the course in time to join the treble club, making that era a draw. Meanwhile, at Paris-Roubaix, the wins record of four goes to Mr. Paris-Roubaix, Roger De Vlaeminck, and Boonen, with nobody nipping at their heels right now.

The limiting factors at these races are overlapping but not quite the same. Both races are hard to survive intact, so part of the limitation on career wins is crashes. They also each come after a few warm-up cobbled affairs, something that has been true for a while, and what happened to Wout Van Aert this year is not that different from the calamity that seems to strike a couple of the top favorites every year. Illness in spring is another issue as riders go south for a few weeks before trekking back north, encountering every virus known to western Europe along the way. Where they differ is in the riding style, something we have covered a lot — Flanders has hills and endless corners; Roubaix is a straight flat line across very different stones. The former is a mix of skills over a base of pure strength, the latter more just power. That you sometimes get small sprint finishes merely reflects the possibility that more than one rider meets the criteria, but not a lot more than one.

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Flanders’ record being so low reflects all of those variables, where strong riders who can climb are just as likely to win as strong riders who can sprint. It has wider appeal, more possible outcomes, and thus harder for a few guys to control over a span of years. Van der Poel will almost certainly set a new Flanders record, even if his luck runs out on occasion, or other riders like Van Aert, Pidcock and Pogačar take him on more often. But his luck has been amazing, not just being healthier than the competition but in taking two narrow sprint wins. That’s how you stand out from history.

And because cycling is so weird, van der Poel maybe won’t set a new Paris-Roubaix record, even though that is absolutely the race he should dominate. Stylistically, how many riders can match his perfect skillset to this course? This has always been true of the Hell of the North, that it’s absolutely not for everyone. Few of the stars can make it across the infernal stones of France in good shape, or upright, and if the winners’ circle is expanded at all, it’s for stallions like Johan Vansummeren who aren’t likely to win anywhere else. With such a narrow appeal, the race is susceptible to domination by the exact right rider.

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But the record is stuck at four, because shit happens, and because that same straightforward path to victory isn’t quite exclusive enough. Mr. Paris-Roubaix had to contend at first with Merckx and some other notable single-cobble winners like Walter Godefroot, then Francesco Moser, who ended De Vlaeminck’s run with three consecutive wins. Moser then tried four times to match the record and failed, with Raas and Hennie Kuiper in his way, then Hinault, Kelly and so on. Boonen matched the record, which I found surprising at the time but makes sense when you watch an old recording of his first ride there in 2002 with US Postal. Still, it took a couple sprint wins and Cancellara health issues to put him over the top. Maybe van der Poel can bag three more wins, particularly if Flanders competition broadens and that record-setting win eludes him, but I dunno. Everything about Paris-Roubaix is mentally exhausting.

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Best of the Rest: Of the races listed above, I’d say E3, Gent-Wevelgem, Amstel and La Flèche all have interesting career record totals, in that you can expect the same guys showing up there to win year after year. San Sebastian and Paris-Tours may see some riders come and go given their proximity to the grand tours, although they are wonderful races and in the case of the Basque classic, Evenepoel is almost sure to go back for a record win in a perfect race for him… every time he misses the Tour.

Otherwise, I don’t see anyone chasing any of these records in the short term. Two of these records — Amstel and the departed Züri — are matters of national pride which may not be replicated. Racing-wise, there is no Philippe Gilbert in the current Amstel field to threaten the record (PhilGil fell one short at four wins), and the course changes have opened up the race to more guys… even van der Poel. Maybe Wout stays healthy for the next decade and owns E3, but Boonen’s five wins is an elite standard. Nobody is chasing La Flèche like Valverde did.

Anyway, enjoy the exploits of van der Poel, Pogačar and maybe Remco or Wout. These are all-time records they are chasing, and some or all of them will be all-time figures in the sport as a result.