Tadej Pogačar And Mathieu Van Der Poel Move Up In The Monuments League!

Now that the 2024 road season is over, we can look back on the top winners; Tadej Pogačar and Mathieu van der Poel and their move up the table of all-time Monument winners. Between the two stars, they have won Liège-Bastogne-Liège, Il Lombardia (Pogačar), Ronde van Vlaanderen and Paris-Roubaix (Van der Poel) this season. They also had a few other fairly good results, but Grand Tours, Classics and World championships are for another day.

Tadej Pogačar’s Monuments palmarès was already very good before this season, but now after a fourth-in-a-row victory in Il Lombardy, the Slovenian won his seventh monument last Saturday and joins Gino Bartali, Tom Boonen and Fabian Cancellara. All these champions of the past won seven monuments during their careers. Bartali had the problem of the Second World War interrupting his career, he still managed to win four Milano-Sanremo’s in 1939, 1940, 1947 and 1950 and Il Lombardia three times in 1936, 1939 and 1940.

Tom Boonen and Fabian Cancellara took their seven Monuments more recently than ‘L’intramontabile’. The two Classics-men split the Monuments between them. Tommeke won his home race, De Ronde van Vlaanderen, three times in his career and holds the record (with Roger de Vlaeminck) of Paris-Roubaix wins with four victories. Cancellara won Flanders three times and Roubaix three times and also Milano-Sanremo once.

Bartali, Boonen and Cancellara have been joined by the World champion, Tadej Pogačar. The Slovenian is still only 26-years-old, but he has four Il Lombardia wins to go with his two Liège-Bastoge-Liège victories and his one De Ronde. It’s safe to say that Boonen, Cancellara and Bartali will not win any more races, Pogačar is going to add to his palmarès, how many? Who knows, but there will be more Monument victories.