Ganna breaks Van Aert’s heart again, overpowering him in the final metres of Dwars door Vlaanderen

Last year already delivered a bizarre finale at Dwars door Vlaanderen. Neilson Powless headed to the line with three Visma | Lease a Bike riders and still managed to beat them all. The Dutch team put all of its chips on Wout van Aert that day, only for the Belgian to come up short in the sprint once again.

Defending champion Powless was unable to defend his title this year because of a knee injury, but that did nothing to weaken the field. Van Aert, Mads Pedersen, Jasper Philipsen, Florian Vermeersch and Tobias Lund Andresen were all on the start list, with Van Aert especially eager to erase the memory of his 2025 disappointment in Waregem.

Right from the flag, the pace was fierce. No genuine early breakaway was allowed to form, and the peloton stayed together all the way to Berg Ten Houte. There, it was not opportunists but the favourites themselves who lit up the race. A front group of eighteen riders moved clear, including Pedersen, Laporte, Brennan, Vermeersch and Lund Andresen.

It was a beautiful move, packed almost exclusively with riders capable of winning, but not every team had made the split. INEOS Grenadiers took up the chase and, with 90 kilometres still to race, brought everything back together. The relentless pace then proved too much for Arnaud De Lie, whose spring once again appeared to lose direction after a strong ride in In Flanders Fields.

The next acceleration followed quickly. On the Onderbossenaarstraat, Van Aert himself turned the screw and forced another elite selection. Pedersen, Vermeersch, Tim van Dijke and Jonas Abrahamsen were among those who made it across, while Van Aert also had teammates Christophe Laporte and Per Strand Hagenes with him. Notably absent from the move: Alpecin-Premier Tech.

But Visma | Lease a Bike’s numerical advantage actually helped stall the move at the front, and the race came back together once more. Hagenes then tried to launch the next attack for the Killer Bees, who were clearly in the mood to animate the race. Still, it remained difficult to create a decisive gap, and so the constant aggression went unrewarded for the time being. The next hilly section, featuring the Knokteberg, looked the likeliest place for the race to truly explode.

On the Knokteberg, also known as the Trieu, Mick van Dijke briefly tried to go clear, but he was not given any room. It was only after that sequence of climbs that Romain Grégoire, Niklas Larsen and Thomas Gachignard managed to get away and open up a lead of around half a minute. On the Eikenberg, however, Van Aert launched again.

And what an acceleration it was. Filippo Ganna was dealing with a mechanical issue at that moment, while Matthew Brennan was soon dropped, and suddenly nobody could stay on Van Aert’s wheel. The Belgian powered across to the leaders in one huge effort, looking like the Van Aert of old again. He opened up a significant gap immediately, and the chasing riders were suddenly forced into a coordinated pursuit.

There was little cohesion behind him, though. Magnus Sheffield tried to bridge with Tim van Dijke, but they made only limited inroads. Van Aert received solid help from the two remaining escapees, while in the peloton Soudal Quick-Step took control for Paul Magnier, who was still in contention there. At that point the gap had already grown to 45 seconds.

Van Aert was, of course, the outstanding favourite among the three leaders, and the fight for victory was starting to look realistic. The Belgian from Visma | Lease a Bike was clearly the strongest rider up front, but his companions were hanging on stubbornly. Behind them, the two chasers had been joined by Florian Vermeersch. Then, on the Nokereberg, Van Aert accelerated once more, and that was the end of the road for Grégoire.

But Larsen clung on impressively. With last year’s defeat to Powless still in the back of his mind, Van Aert wanted to leave nothing to chance, yet he simply could not shake off the Dane from the Bas Tietema team. The race was still wide open: the two leaders had 25 seconds on the chasers, but the peloton was closing fast. Behind them, both the Rockets and Visma | Lease a Bike were doing everything they could to disrupt the chase.

The cooperation at the front remained good, but even so the bunch kept getting closer. There was still one more ascent of the Nokereberg to come, over the finishing strip of the new Nokere Koerse. There, Van Aert finally dropped Larsen, who was then swallowed up by the bunch. It became Van Aert against everyone else, and that latest acceleration gave him some valuable breathing room.

Behind him, though, it was all-out war. Ganna, delayed twice earlier by bad luck, launched his move, but Hagenes repeatedly acted as a major obstacle. Later, the Italian did manage to break clear with Vermeersch, while the peloton also continued to close. It stayed tense all the way into the finishing straight. There, Ganna surged past Van Aert and took victory in Dwars door Vlaanderen. The desperately unlucky Belgian still held on for second, just ahead of the peloton.