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Who will win De Ronde 2023?

Who will win De Ronde 2023?

  • Wout Van Aert

    Votes: 11 14.3%
  • Mathieu van der Poel

    Votes: 35 45.5%
  • Tadej Pogacar

    Votes: 22 28.6%
  • Matej Mohoric

    Votes: 2 2.6%
  • Mads Pedersen

    Votes: 1 1.3%
  • Christophe Laporte

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Valentin Madouas

    Votes: 2 2.6%
  • Stefan Küng

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • An American (Powless, Jorgenson, Sheffield)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Someone else

    Votes: 4 5.2%

  • Total voters
    77
Voted Van Aert.

I'm mainly curious how Big 3 votes are divided. Pogacar getting more votes than Van Aert is very surprising to me.
How is that surprising, Pogacar is in a great form and he tore the race to shredz last year. What Pogacar did in the KWaremont is almost unprecedented. All it takes is 0.5% more, maybe vanderpoel miss a bidon or get a puncture and has to put some energy to get back to the group , and the elastic on Kwaremont snap. And pogacar won.

I don't think Belgian pozzato has ever looked like winning this race by contrast? Tomorrow is the best chance he has, but in e3 he was completely inferior to vandepoel and pogacar strengthwise, they just rode badly from a tactical perspective and this helped WVA who did a slightly more clever race
 
No Benoot as one of the listed options? A Jumbo minion seems the most likely non-big 3 option to me, and then it would have to be him or Laporte.

That being said, Van der Poel is the obvious shout here, only ways he loses that wouldn't be a big surprise are 1) lose a sprint to Van Aert, 2) get dropped by Pogacar, or 3) get outnumbered by Jumbo. And I wouldn't bet on any of those options.
 
No Benoot as one of the listed options? A Jumbo minion seems the most likely non-big 3 option to me, and then it would have to be him or Laporte.

That being said, Van der Poel is the obvious shout here, only ways he loses that wouldn't be a big surprise are 1) lose a sprint to Van Aert, 2) get dropped by Pogacar, or 3) get outnumbered by Jumbo. And I wouldn't bet on any of those options.
Would an accident be a big surprise?
 
Would an accident be a big surprise?
It's always possible, but it doesn't tend to happen at Ronde to any of the main favourites. The only more recent examples that come to mind are complete freak accidents (Alaphilippe and the motorbike, Sagan and the jacket) that have nothing to do with structural causes. It also doesn't tend to happen to Van der Poel much in general - he doesn't crash often and definitely doesn't injure himself often. So I think it's more likely that he, say, loses the sprint to Pogacar than gets taken out of contention like that, tbh.
 
No Benoot as one of the listed options? A Jumbo minion seems the most likely non-big 3 option to me, and then it would have to be him or Laporte.

That being said, Van der Poel is the obvious shout here, only ways he loses that wouldn't be a big surprise are 1) lose a sprint to Van Aert, 2) get dropped by Pogacar, or 3) get outnumbered by Jumbo. And I wouldn't bet on any of those options.
Benoot has practically no sprint at all so would definitely need to be solo to win which limits his chances. Laporte has a very good sprint in long hard races such as the Wollongong worlds where he took a medal from the reduced group sprint for the minor medals which means he has multiple routes to victory.

Voted for Pogacar as I believe in him and really want him to win it. Would be happy with Wout winning but if MVDP aeon I would be a touch bored by the result if not necessarily the way it was won.
 

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