Mathieu van der Poel and Wout van Aert still carry lessons from five years ago into Tirreno-Adriatico

Back in 2021, cycling was still being shaped by the impact of COVID restrictions. The virus had already turned the 2020 season upside down, and there were still serious doubts during the winter of 2021 about how long the new campaign would manage to stay on track.

In the end, only Paris-Roubaix fell off the list of major races, as it was moved to October, but the uncertainty meant the build-up races were contested with real urgency from the very beginning.

That was also true of Tirreno-Adriatico, which attracted a star-studded start list. Van der Poel arrived as the winner of Strade Bianche, Pogačar as the surprise Tour de France champion of 2020, Van Aert was already widely seen as the sport’s great all-rounder, and Alaphilippe showed up in his rainbow jersey.

And that was only the start. Peter Sagan, Simon Yates, Greg Van Avermaet, Jakob Fuglsang, Mikel Landa, Elia Viviani, Egan Bernal, Geraint Thomas, Michał Kwiatkowski, Thibaut Pinot, Nairo Quintana, Romain Bardet, Niki Terpstra, Caleb Ewan, Vincenzo Nibali and Fernando Gaviria were all there too. One top rider after another. Paris-Nice, where Max Schachmann, Aleksandr Vlasov and Ion Izagirre made up the final podium that year, simply could not compete with that line-up, even though Primož Roglič did win three stages there.

Tirreno-Adriatico opens in 2026 with a time trial in Lido di Camaiore and ends with a sprint stage in San Benedetto del Tronto, but in 2021 it was the other way around. “It is a good build-up to the classics to race really hard here for a full week,” Van Aert said before the start of that edition, already making clear that he wanted to target the general classification.

That is exactly how it played out, starting on day one. Most eyes were on riders such as Ewan, Gaviria, Viviani, Sagan and Tim Merlier, already among the fastest men in the peloton at the time. But it was Van Aert who took command of the race immediately by winning a full-blooded bunch sprint and pulling on the leader’s jersey.

On day two, RCS chose a stage in 2021 that resembled the one scheduled for Tuesday in 2026, though this year’s version also includes gravel. Back then, the finish came in Chiusdino, where the final kilometres dragged uphill.

João Almeida was out front, but in the end it was his own team-mate Alaphilippe who came over him in the final metres of the stage. Van der Poel, launching late, and Van Aert both had to settle for following the world champion home, with Pogačar right there alongside them.

The third stage served up another similar test for the riders: more than 200 kilometres and a sharp finish, this time in Gualdo Tadino. Classic Tirreno-Adriatico, and something we can still recognise in the 2026 route.

This time it was Zdeněk Štybar who applied the pressure late on for Quick-Step, forcing Van Aert to respond. Van der Poel, in his Dutch national champion’s jersey, sat right on the Belgian’s wheel and then blasted past him to take his first stage win.

Stage four of Tirreno-Adriatico 2021 finished atop Prati di Tivo, a genuine mountain stage. Van der Poel had already made it clear that he was not riding for the overall, so the fight was left to the GC men, Van Aert included.

Still wearing the blue leader’s jersey, Van Aert tackled the final climb in textbook Tom Dumoulin style: ride your own pace and see how far it gets you. It got him very far, just not quite far enough. In the final kilometres, the pure climbers, led by Pogačar and Yates, ultimately proved too strong, leaving Van Aert to finish ninth on the day.

Day five of Tirreno-Adriatico delivered a stage that many cycling fans will still remember vividly. You can still watch the highlights. Castelfidardo provided the backdrop, hosting the now-famous “walls” stage that year.

The conditions were relatively cold, and Van der Poel chose to trust his instinct and attack from a long way out. Van Aert and Pogačar were both sparked into action by the Dutchman’s aggression, but Van der Poel pressed on even harder on the descent and at one point opened up a lead of three minutes on his own.

Behind him, the race exploded completely on the steep ramps, with Pogačar dropping everyone and even managing to get Van der Poel back into sight. The Dutchman still held on to win by twelve seconds, but he crossed the line utterly spent. Completely spent, in fact. “It was survival of the fittest,” was the shared conclusion among those present.

On paper, day six was another stage that could have gone in several directions, so viewers settled in again on 15 March 2021 expecting another thriller. Instead, things unfolded very differently. Jumbo-Visma and Alpecin-Fenix allowed the breakaway plenty of freedom, and it was Mads Würtz Schmidt who eventually took the win.

“Going full gas every day is just too much,” Van Aert admitted at that point. “It was not easy to control, and I was tired as well. This Tirreno-Adriatico has already been very hard,” the Belgian said afterwards.

In 2021, Tirreno-Adriatico ended with a time trial rather than beginning with one, but Filippo Ganna was already in the line-up back then too. The Italian started as the overwhelming favourite, only to be beaten by... Van Aert. With that ride, the Belgian also sealed second place in the overall standings behind Pogačar.

Van der Poel took things relatively easy by that point after all the effort he had already put into the race earlier that week and finished only 67th.

The spring of 2021 produced some winners that few had predicted beforehand. Jasper Stuyven won Milan-San Remo after a late attack, ahead of Ewan, Van Aert, Sagan and Van der Poel. In Flanders, Kasper Asgreen won the E3 Saxo Classic solo and then the Tour of Flanders after beating Van der Poel in a sprint, while Dwars door Vlaanderen went to Dylan van Baarle and Van Aert landed Gent-Wevelgem.

Asgreen ended up being one of the men of the spring, but he had also ridden Tirreno-Adriatico that year. His results there? 145th, 34th, 123rd, 104th, 57th, 84th and 8th.

Van der Poel, Van Aert and Alaphilippe all came away from that spring fully aware of the toll Tirreno had taken on their bodies. “That was a mistake I will not make again. I learned my lesson,” said the Dutchman, and in the years that followed he did indeed put those lessons into practice in his preparation races.

Van der Poel tried to do without Tirreno-Adriatico in 2022 and 2024, but in the seasons around those years he realised he really does need the race. The evidence backed that up as well: in both 2023 and 2025 he won Milan-San Remo after riding Tirreno-Adriatico, despite not taking a stage win there. This year, he is again likely to use the race mainly to add another layer on top of the base he already has.

Van Aert has ridden the Race of the Two Seas only once more since then, in 2023, and that appearance was a fairly quiet one. Even so, it still laid a good foundation for a spring in which he finished among the top four in every major classic he rode. This season, Visma | Lease a Bike will hope the Belgian can go deep a few times in Tirreno-Adriatico and use that effort to work his way back towards peak form for April.