Analysis of the Tour of Flandres

The Tour of Flanders race is one of the most exciting and ingenious classics on the entire World Tour calendar. To be honest, it's one of my top-3 favourite races. I'll leave you with a method to analyse and predict a race's outcome based on computational analysis.

The analysis will be based between 2010-2019, due the calendar is normal and not exist the pandemic of Covid-19. And the change of the race date outside the cobles classic season, making it impossible to correctly analyse the data.

Winners:

Winners
2021	Kasper Asgreen
2020	Mathieu Van Der Poel
2019	Alberto Betiol
2018	Niki Terpstra
2017	Philippe Gilbert
2016	Peter Sagan
2015	Alexander Kristoff
2014	Fabian Cancellara
2013	Fabian Cancellara
2012	Tom boonen
2011	Nick Nuyens
2010	Fabian Cancellara

The races choices for analysis were based on their reputation for preparing for the Tour of Flanders, due to either having cobles or being tough enough to get to see the performance of the main candidates for victory in the Tour of Flanders.

The chosen races were Strade Bianche, H3 Harelbeke, Gent-Wegelvem, Dwars door vlaanderen, Omloop het nieuwsblad, kuurne-bruxelles-kuurne and Le samyn (total 7 races). It only counts races that the cyclists have finished or have reached within control.

From analyzing the data from these seven races, I realized that all of the Tour of Flandres winners in the years chosen for analysis had participated in the H3 Harelbeke race. It is also worth noting a large turnout at the Gent-Wevelgem, Dwars door vlaanderen, Omloop het nieuwsblad and kuurne-bruxelles-kuurne races.

Taking a closer look at the E3 Harelbeke race, which seems to be the most influential race in preparation for the Tour of Flanders, it was in this race that the riders had good results. Looking at the results of the cyclists who won the Tour of Flanders, they all made the top-10 in the E3 Harelbeke race, except for Nick Nyuens who finished outside the top-10 (38th place).

In conclusion, it is possible to predict the possible candidates for victory in the Tour of Flanders by analysing the results of races preceding the Tour of Flanders, as I have done here. With this, I leave you a taste of what will be contained in the genesis of this blog. I hope you like it and stay there.