"Scheldeprijs is a weird race for me, I don’t exactly understand where it fits and how to classify it, or perhaps it has multiple identities. Sometimes it acts as a bona fide Flandrien Cobbled Classic and is won by the likes of Peter Van Petegem or Servais Knaven, despite being very flat near Antwerp and the Dutch border with relatively benign cobbled sectors. And sometimes it really does act like the unofficial sprinters’ world championships...It was only with 24 hours’ digestion after its 2022 completion that I even decided to cover Scheldeprijs this year, because the winner made me smile, and embodied this dividing line classification conundrum."