On Sunday 6 April 1986, with 100 metres or so remaining of that year’s Tour of Flanders, Adrie van der Poel darted out from behind Sean Kelly’s wheel.
Listen to the road.cc Podcast on Apple Podcasts
Listen to the road.cc Podcast on Spotify
Listen to the road.cc Podcast on Amazon Music
Kelly, already with five monuments to his name and fresh from his maiden Milan-Sanremo victory just weeks before, was the man of the moment in the classics. Arguably in the form of his life – he would sprint to a second Paris-Roubaix win a week later – the 29-year-old Irishman was the clear favourite of the leading group of four, also boasting Steve Bauer and Jean-Philippe Vandenbrande, which entered the finishing straight in Meerbeke.
Van der Poel, on the other hand, was relatively unfancied. A strong, versatile all-rounder, the Dutchman had yet to taste victory in 1986, despite a string of top ten results in that year’s one-day races, including seventh at Milan-Sanremo, 23 seconds behind Kelly.
The Kwantum Hallen rider’s Ronde hadn’t quite gone to plan either, after a crash on the Koppenberg forced him to jump off his bike, shoulder it cyclocross-style, and run up the notoriously steep cobbles.
But the 10-strong break that emerged from the chaos on the Koppenberg, including Eddy Planckaert and Greg LeMond, soon faltered, and had almost completely disintegrated by the final climb of the Bosberg, Planckaert puncturing before Bauer forged ahead solo.
Van der Poel – over a minute adrift at one point – managed to bridge across to Kelly and Vandebrande with around 7km to go, and that reconstituted trio reeled in Bauer soon after on the outskirts of Meerbeke.
On the finishing straight, Kelly – who later admitted that he was overconfident on the day – launched early. Van der Poel followed and then lurched to the left (modern commissaire rulings be damned), overhauling the Irish rider in the dying metres, throwing his arms in the air, his place in cycling history sealed.
This Sunday, Adrie’s son, Mathieu, is aiming to write the latest chapter in his own era-defining story, by winning a record fourth Tour of Flanders, 40 years on from his dad’s one and only win at the Ronde.
Not that the Van der Poel family is overly concerned about records. At least not right now.
“Mathieu is going for the victory, but he’s never thinking about the record,” Adrie, now 66-years-old, tells the road.cc Podcast from his hotel room in Oudenaarde three days before this year’s Tour of Flanders.
“If and when he wins, then you have the record. But it’s not a healthy way to race, to race for a record. You race to win. And if you win enough, then the records follow.”
Van der Poel Snr has spent the week leading up to the Ronde riding the routes of the cobbled classics alongside amateurs for luxury bike tour company InGamba. Which means I’ve had the opportunity to rub shoulders with 1980s cycling royalty on some of the sport’s most iconic roads. Briefly, anyway, until he disappears around the next corner.
When I ask him what he thought of my questionable technique on the pavé, he shoots me a mischievous look and laughs: “I don’t know, you were so far behind, I couldn’t see you!” Harsh, but fair.
“It’s always nice to come back to places you know very well,” he continues, reflecting on his busy post-retirement lifestyle, which also sees him help out at Mathieu’s Alpecin-Premier Tech squad.
“And it’s nice to do some shitty climbs! Like the Koppenberg, you don’t do it for pleasure. But it’s nice to do it a couple of days before the Tour of Flanders, to give you another side of what the roads are like, and it brings you closer to the action almost.”
On his last night with the group, Van der Poel was treated to a screening (via YouTube and the power of Bluetooth) of his 1986 Tour of Flanders triumph, complete with a cake adorned with a huge ‘40’.
And while he went on to win Liège-Bastogne-Liège and Amstel Gold, it’s clear that breakthrough win in Meerbeke stands out in Van der Poel Snr’s canon. Just don’t remind him how long ago it was.
“I don’t want to talk about it being 40 years!” he says. “It’s one of my most important victories, for sure, but also the victory in Liege was something special. Because I always thought I could win Roubaix, and that Liege was too hard for me, and I won. I’m very satisfied with the career I had.
“That year, 1986, I was doing really well, but I couldn’t get a victory. I think in the Tour of Flanders everything came together. Maybe I was the luckiest. For sure I wasn’t the strongest, because there was a very strong breakaway.
“But you have to be there for the victory. Everything came together very nicely. It was a little bit surprising, but especially in the final, I felt very well. Most of the races I was together with Kelly – Lombardia, Roubaix. And, you know, it wasn’t easy for me to beat him. If we did 10 sprints, normally I’d lose eight or nine.
“But I was thinking what he was thinking, and he was so confident, that’s where he made his mistake. I knew he could launch a long sprint, and I could pass him, and that’s what happened.”
Fast forward 30 years to this Sunday, and what does Adrie make of Mathieu’s chances of securing that history-making fourth Ronde – and beating his own Kelly variant, two-time winner Tadej Pogačar, in the process?
“Sunday could be a race of surprises,” he says. “But I think in the end we’re going to see the same riders. I don’t say Mathieu is going to win, or he’s going to lose. But the last few years, Tadej has show he’s a little bit better on the Kwaremont.
“I think Tadej is aiming to win the five monuments in a year. I don’t know him, but it’s great. And it’s possible,” he continues.
“I think it’s good that Tadej’s doing what he’s doing, that he’s going to the classics, the grand tours, the worlds, and trying to win them. You have to accept that in each generation there’s a rider who’s a little bit above the others. Now it’s Tadej, and in five years’ time, it could be Paul Seixas, who knows?”
And what about the wildcard that is Tour of Flanders debutant Remco Evenepoel, the subject of most of the media hype during Flemish Holy Week, thanks to Red Bull’s somewhat controversial means of announcing the news – does the presence of the Olympic and world time trial champion change how Van der Poel and Alpecin approach the race?
“No, he’s doing his own thing,” his dad says flatly. “I think it’s wrong if you change tactics just because a certain rider is there.
“Is it going to change things? Maybe, maybe not. So it’s better you stick with the plan the team has. And you’ll see the first time and second time up the Kwaremont what the situation is.
“But it’s good he’s there. It’s good when you have two riders who can win the race, but it’s much better when you have ten riders who can win the race.”
Switching focus back to Mathieu’s hopes of surpassing the likes of Johan Museeuw, Fabian Cancellara, and Tom Boonen as the outright record holder at the Ronde, Adrie insists his son’s achievements have been beyond both their wildest expectations.
“I always knew Mathieu had the potential to win big races. But then he wins Sanremo, Roubaix, Flanders, world championships. It’s a lot more than he expected, even dreamed about,” he says.
Adrie also points out that much of Mathieu’s success stems from his own unique approach to the sport, a far cry from the one adopted by his father during his ‘80s heyday.
“You can’t change him. In the beginning, it was strange that the day after a big classic, he was playing golf! The day after a classic, I was dead. I went on the bike for a few hours then straight to bed. Now I understand why he’s doing that,” he says.
“I told him that moving to Spain, getting away from the pressure, the journalists, was the best choice he could make in his life. Here, it feels more like work. While over there, it’s fun, it’s pleasure. He still enjoys racing. Especially the big races.”
And they don’t get much bigger than Sunday – and a shot at Tour of Flanders history.
The road.cc Podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Amazon Music, and if you have an Alexa you can tell it to play the road.cc Podcast. It’s also embedded above, so you can just press play.
