Belgian Wout van Aert won the Paris-Roubaix cycling classic on Sunday. He beat Slovenian world champion Tadej Pogacar in the sprint, while his Belgian compatriot Jasper Stuyven took third place.
Published on: 04/12/2026 - 4:42 p.m. Modified on: 04/12/2026 - 5:42 p.m.
Wout Van Aert, pursued by bad luck in recent years, realized his lifelong dream by winning his first Paris-Roubaix on Sunday April 12 with a sprint victory against Tadej Pogacar, at the end of the suspense.
The Belgian, who set off alone with the Slovenian superstar more than 50 km from the finish, won after a completely crazy race that Mathieu van der Poel, three outgoing winner, lost with a double puncture in the Trouée d'Arenberg.
Another Belgian, Jasper Stuyven, who arrived thirteen seconds after Van Aert, completed the podium while the Frenchman Christophe Laporte finished fifth.
Already second last year, Pogacar narrowly misses another opportunity to win the last Monument which still resists him. And will therefore not achieve the Grand Slam this year.
End of the black series
For Van Aert, in tears, overcome by emotion at the finish, it is the consecration of a life to chase a victory in one of the two great cobbled classics that he has dreamed of since childhood with the Tour of Flanders.
The Visma-Lease a bike rider has experienced a lot of disappointments, falls and injuries in recent years, also experiencing bad luck in Roubaix where he finished second in 2023, third in 2024 and fourth in 2025.
Magnificent loser, eternally cursed, he took a brilliant revenge on Sunday by easily beating Pogacar in the sprint to win, at 31, his second victory only in a Monument after Milan-Sanremo in 2020.
A ten-time stage winner in the Tour de France, he put an end to his black streak in the classics on the same day when his eternal rival, Mathieu van der Poel, in turn had a meeting with bad luck.
In the running for a fourth coronation to equal Roger de Vlaeminck and Tom Boonen, the Dutchman experienced a nightmare in the terrible Trouée d'Arenberg where he punctured twice to lose two minutes on the other favorites.
At the cost of an enormous effort, he managed to get within twenty seconds of the lead but it was at that moment that Pogacar and Van Aert accelerated to leave together, in the Auchy-lez-Orchies sector, 53 km from the finish.
In the velodrome, Van Aert easily made the difference to become the first Belgian to win there since Philippe Gilbert in 2017.
With AFP
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