E3 Saxo Classic

E3 Saxo Classic is a WorldTour one-day bike race held in late March in Belgium. It runs roughly 200 kilometers from Harelbeke in West Flanders into the Flemish Ardennes, linking cobbled bergs and farm roads in a route that closely mirrors the Tour of Flanders the following week.

E3 Saxo Classic starts and finishes in Harelbeke, in West Flanders, and is decided on the cobbled climbs of the Flemish Ardennes. First raced in 1958, it is usually held in late March, the week before the Tour of Flanders. Tom Boonen holds the record with five wins.

Why is the race called E3?

The name comes from a motorway. The first race, in 1958, was called Harelbeke-Antwerp-Harelbeke, and the E3 was the motorway built between the two cities in the 1960s, now the E17. From 1970 the race carried the road’s number as the E3 Prijs Harelbeke.

Armand Desmet won the first edition in a small-group sprint ahead of Lucien Demunster and Briek Schotte. The organizer is the Harelbeke cycling club Koninklijke Wielerclub Hand in Hand. The race joined the WorldTour in 2012, and since 1958 only the 2020 edition, during the pandemic, has not been run. In October 2025 Harelbeke agreed to host the start and finish until at least 2031.

The climbs: Taaienberg, Paterberg and Oude Kwaremont

E3 is nicknamed the little Tour of Flanders because it borrows many of that race’s climbs. In the 2026 road book the Taaienberg came with 71 kilometers left: 700 cobbled meters at an average of 6.3 percent. It is the climb Boonen used to test his legs on. The Paterberg, with 42 kilometers left, is only 400 meters long but averages 12.9 percent and reaches 20.3. The Oude Kwaremont starts less than 3 kilometers later and is 2.2 kilometers long at 4 percent. The Tiegemberg is the last climb, 20 kilometers from the finish.

The route changes a little every year. In 2026 the organizers sent the race up to the Oude Kwaremont twice, the first time by the paved Keuzelingsstraat, an approach they said had never been used in a major race. They also included two ascents of the Karnemelkbeekstraat in Ronse, known since 2019 as the E3 Col.

Rik Van Looy and Jan Raas: three wins in a row

Rik Van Looy won three years running from 1964 to 1966, each time from a small group, and added a solo win in 1969. His four victories were the record until Boonen. Eddy Merckx never won in Harelbeke: he was third in 1971 and second in 1972.

Every winner was Belgian until 1977, when the German Dietrich Thurau finished 2 minutes 8 seconds ahead of Patrick Sercu. The Dutchman Jan Raas then won three in a row from 1979 to 1981, the second of them as world champion.

Tom Boonen’s five wins

Boonen won every edition from 2004 to 2007 and a fifth in 2012. The first was a bunch sprint ahead of Jaan Kirsipuu. In 2005 he won from a group of seven, in 2006, as world champion, he beat Alessandro Ballan in a two-man finish, and in 2007 he beat four others with Fabian Cancellara second. The fifth was a bunch sprint again, ahead of Óscar Freire. In 2005, 2006 and 2012 he went on to win the Tour of Flanders too.

Fabian Cancellara’s three solo wins

Cancellara won in 2010, 2011 and 2013, each time alone. In 2010 he attacked just before the final kilometer and left Boonen and Juan Antonio Flecha behind. In 2011 and 2013 he won by a minute and by 1 minute 4 seconds. Geraint Thomas also won alone, in 2015, three years before he won the Tour de France.

Van Aert, Van der Poel and Pogačar in 2023

Wout van Aert won in 2022 just ahead of his teammate Christophe Laporte, after the two rode away together over the Paterberg with 40 kilometers left. A year later the race came down to three riders. Mathieu van der Poel attacked into a crosswind with 60 kilometers to go, and only Van Aert and Tadej Pogačar could follow. Pogačar forced the pace on the Paterberg and again on the Oude Kwaremont, where Van Aert briefly lost the wheel.

The three reached Harelbeke together. Pogačar attacked 3.5 kilometers from the line, could not get clear and ended up leading out the sprint. Van Aert started his own sprint 250 meters out, came past Van der Poel and won for the second year running, with Pogačar third.

Mathieu van der Poel’s three wins in a row

Van der Poel won the next three editions alone. In 2024 he went clear on the Paterberg with 43 kilometers left. Van Aert crashed on the climb seconds later, chased to within ten seconds and then faded, and Jasper Stuyven took second place 1 minute 31 seconds down. In 2025 Van der Poel was held up by a crash in the first 10 kilometers, joined Mads Pedersen and Filippo Ganna in a move on the Taaienberg and left them on the Oude Kwaremont with about 40 kilometers to go. Pedersen finished second at 1 minute 7 seconds.

The third win was the closest. Van der Poel followed an attack on the Taaienberg, went alone on the Boigneberg with 63.5 kilometers left, caught the early break and dropped it on the Paterberg. Four chasers, Per Strand Hagenes, Florian Vermeersch, Stan Dewulf and Jonas Abrahamsen, closed to within ten seconds in the last 5 kilometers. Vermeersch had almost reached him at the one-kilometer mark, looked around for help that did not come, and Van der Poel held on. “I thought I could make it but with 5km to go, it nearly went wrong,” he said afterward.

Three in a row puts him level with Van Looy and Raas, and only Boonen’s run of four is longer. With three wins in all he also matches Raas and Cancellara.

This is the race where spring Classics contenders stop testing form and start declaring it. The route is selective enough to produce a real hierarchy but early enough that everyone still arrives with something to prove. Because it is nicknamed the little Tour of Flanders and uses many of the same climbs, the result feels like a signal rather than a warm-up. The field is deep, the racing is urgent, and the winner usually leaves with more than a trophy.