Five dark horses for the men's Tour of Flanders 2023

Outside bets who could spring a surprise in 'De Ronde'

Matej Mohoric and Soren Kragh Andersen at the E3 Saxo Classic 2023
(Image credit: Getty Images)

Before the 107th edition of the Tour of Flanders gets underway, three names have been on everyone's lips as the potential winners of this year’s Ronde van Vlaanderen.

Wout van Aert, Mathieu van der Poel and Tadej Pogačar.

The same trio looked head and shoulders above the rest of the field at the recent E3 Saxo Classic won by Van Aert, but that doesn’t mean that someone can’t burst from the pack to spring a major surprise in the outskirts of Oudenaarde on Sunday.

As previous editions have taught us, the Tour of Flanders can be a chaotic race, where things don’t quite go as planned. The route and cobbled Bergs occasionally throw up late twists, and sometimes things go right down to the wire as we saw last year.

Ahead of the action, Cycling Weekly has already looked at the five men’s and women’s favourites for the win.

Here are five potential dark horses for the men’s title this weekend.  

Søren Kragh Andersen (Alpecin-Deceuninck)

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Tom Thewlis

Tom joined Cycling Weekly in early 2022 and his news stories, rider interviews and features appear both online and in the magazine. 


He has reported from some of professional cycling's biggest events and races including the Tour de France and the recent Glasgow World Championships. He has also covered races elsewhere across the world and interviewed some of the biggest stars in the sport including Tom Pidcock, Wout van Aert, Primož Roglič and Lizzie Deignan. 


When not writing news scoops from the WorldTour, or covering stories from elsewhere in the domestic professional scene, he reports on goings on at bike shops up and down the UK, where he is based when not out on the road at races. He has also appeared on the Radio Cycling podcast.