The 2025 Spring Classics season is formally underway after the lads’s and ladies’s pelotons blasted throughout the cobblestones of Flanders over the weekend.
After weeks of heat climate racing to start out the brand new season in Australia, the Center East, and Iberia, biking’s prime Classics stars headed to Belgium to tackle the lads’s Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne, the ladies’s Omloop Het Niewsblad, and the Omloop van het Hageland.
The largest prizes of the Spring Classics season – such because the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix should lie over a month away, however we are able to now declare the Belgian racing season underway.
The primary cobbled races of 2025 introduced up loads of speaking factors, from the type of Classics superteam Visma-Lease a Bike within the males’s races to the brand new panorama of energy among the many ladies’s peloton.
There was loads to speak about in the course of the grand opening of the cobbled season, and the approaching weeks – as we ramp up in the direction of the 2 massive Monuments – will throw up numerous questions and subjects of debate.
Earlier than all that comes up, nonetheless, are our 5 massive conclusions from the 2025 Opening Weekend.
Visma-Lease a Bike have been missing of their ‘A’ sport – and different groups benefited
The Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne pressroom was positioned contained in the native church this yr, with pc tables, tv screens and trays of sandwiches changing pews and prayer books for not less than one afternoon.
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When Jasper Philipsen delivered a few residence truths in his press convention late on Sunday night, it wasn’t fairly a case of preaching to the choir, however the assembled congregation of listening journalists have been hardly stunned by what he needed to say.
“It is also clear that UAE and Visma weren’t as aggressive as we have seen within the final yr. After all, they have been there, however not higher than the others,” Philipsen identified, the proof was very a lot already plain to see.
Certainly, after three years of runaway success in Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, topped by victories for Marianne Vos and Jan Tratnik final yr and a triumph the subsequent day in Kuurne for Wout van Aert, Visma visibly struggled at this yr’s Opening Weekend 2025,
Not even the runner-up spot for Olav Kooij on Sunday compensated for that. Though with out it, the media criticism would certainly have been all of the fiercer come Monday morning.
It was inconceivable to keep away from the distinction with the earlier weekend’s beautiful triumph within the Volta ao Algarve for Jonas Vingegaard, to not point out taking their netting prime two spots within the remaining time trial of the Portuguese stage race. The whys and wherefores will certainly be amply mentioned and dissected within the weeks to return.
Matteo Jorgenson, arguably their strongest rider of the weekend, identified that two key elements of their standard Classics line-up, Christophe Laporte and 2023 winner Dylan van Baarle have been lacking from the 2025 line up due to sickness and harm, and he might need added (however did not) that final yr’s winner, Jan Tratnik, was now not of their line-up both.
Workforce director Grischa Niermann additionally reminded everybody that retired rider Nathan van Hooydonck, beforehand so typically essential for positioning Wout van Aert in precisely the correct spot for a Classics assault, was now not current of their lineup, both.
The largest query mark doubtless resides over Van Aert himself. He had an unsure begin within the Clasica Jaén and likewise faltered within the sprints on the Volta ao Algarve, pushing the Belgian manner again up the rankings of favourites for Omloop. The second when he may have blasted away the winter cobwebs and left the sector for useless in Omloop by no means materialized.
To his credit score, Van Aert isn’t one to keep away from self-criticism, and he mentioned himself that he was by no means actually within the working on Saturday.
Then on Sunday, whereas way more lively, he once more got here up in opposition to the stranglehold of sprinters groups. Helped enormously by the superb climate situations, they have been decided to suffocate any challenges.
“It was not as a lot of an illustration because the previous two years,” Niermann admitted to Nieuwsblad. “Simply positive, however in fact not on the degree he wants to succeed in in a month.”
There’s nonetheless loads of time for Van Aert to maneuver as much as absolute prime form and he’ll be wanting to do this within the greatest cobbled Classics after an extended block at altitude.
As Jorgenson put it, Visma-Lease a Bike ‘simply hasn’t clicked but’. Probably the most encouraging signal from Opening Weekend is the American rider, who appears each on kind for each Paris-Good within the short-term, and his cobbled Traditional marketing campaign.
After the weekend’s racing, within the Kuurne church, the variety of unquestioning believers in Visma-Lease a Bike positive fell away, while the agnostics and wait-and-seers, it was simply the other.
Lotte Claes, Femke Gerritse shock wins throughout Opening Weekend
Lotte Claes (Arkéa-B&B Resorts Ladies) and Femke Gerritse (SD Worx-Protime) have been the shock winners throughout Opening Weekend’s Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and Omloop van het Hageland, exhibiting simply how unpredictable racing will be, particularly in the course of the Classics.
Claes outsprinted Aurela Nerlo (Winspace Orange Seal) within the streets of Ninove after being within the day-long breakaway to safe the primary and largest win of her profession on the Ladies’s WorldTour.
Arkéa-B&B Resorts Ladies might not have began the occasion with one of many outright favourites, however Claes joined an early transfer that included Nerlo, Julie Stockman (DD Group), Elena Pirrone (Roland) and Mieke Docx, and whereas Stockman was distanced, the opposite 4 ended up gaining 13 minutes on the peloton. Over the Muur van Geraardsbergen, Claes and Nerlo nonetheless held over 4 minutes on a chasing duo; Demi Vollering (FDJ-Suez) and Puck Pieterse (Fenix-Deceuninck).
However it was a case of too little too late for the larger groups, and Claes believed in her energy and talent to succeed on the end line, the place she earned a well-deserved victory whereas Nerlo completed second place. Over three minutes behind, Vollering beat Pieterse within the dash for third.
The next day, Gerritse secured the victory at Omloop van Het Hageland, a 1.1 race that’s broadly recognised as being a part of Opening Weekend.
The 23-year-old all-rounder didn’t compete at the day before today’s Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, however she joined a robust staff that included former world champion Anna van der Breggen, who simply returned to competitors after a three-year retirement.
She outsprinted her breakaway companions to win in Tielt-Winge and likewise claimed the primary skilled victory of her profession. Though many would have anticipated that Van der Breggen would take the win since she too was within the breakaway, she did the lion’s share of the teamwork within the transfer after which led out Gerritse completely to safe the win.
Van der Breggen began her season at Setmana Valenciana the place she completed third general, however mentioned that her kind continues to be not the place she desires to be. She will likely be looking forward to peak kind on the Ardennes Classics in April.
UAE Workforce Emirates-XRG are ready for Tadej Pogačar for the cobbled Classics
When Tom Pidcock was requested on Friday who he thought is perhaps a prime contender for Opening Weekend, apart from himself, he barely missed a beat earlier than answering ‘Jonnie Narváez’.
The road-up for each races for UAE Workforce Emirates-XRG was actually a frightening one, with riders of the calibre of Tim Wellens, Narváez, Figueiras Champions Traditional winner Antonio Morgado and former Paris-Roubaix podium finishers Florian Vermeersch and Nils Politt all current.
Wellens himself made the largest effort of any of the favourites to attempt to break the sprinters’ stranglehold on Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne, with a surprising, if in the end futile, 60-kilometre drive for the road.
UAE have been the primary to lift the tempo on Saturday some 90 kilometres from the road, and regardless of Narváez’ spectacular early present of energy on Sunday within the hills of Kuurne, general UAE’s one main cameo got here all the way down to Wellens’ refusal to bow to the inevitable. They actually did not reshape the narrative of both race, with Antonio Morgado’s beautiful early season kind seen in Portugal most positively not on present in Belgium.
Morgado’s major challenges within the Classics are arguably a lot later within the spring, and the identical goes for a Paris-Roubaix contender like Politt. However no one may blame the UAE staff administration in the event that they’re drumming their fingers more and more nervously as they anticipate Tadej Pogačar‘s flight to reach at Brussels airport this spring.
The change of dates for UAE Tour and Opening Weekend benefited each races
For the primary time since Omloop, the UAE Tour and its predecessor, the Abu Dhabi Tour, have been all added to the WorldTour race calendar in 2017, they didn’t overlap. Fairly than UAE ending on the identical weekend as Omloop and Kuurne, the Center Japanese stage race completed every week earlier. The change was small however the advantages have been quick and notable.
It diminished an already ridiculously overloaded weekend of racing and allowed an even bigger media highlight to shine on the primary WorldTour Traditional in Europe of the yr. Equally, it meant that the UAE Tour was the one WorldTour occasion the earlier weekend, and given the world’s primary racer, Tadej Pogačar was racing – and profitable – that occasion additionally gained in prominence.
Most significantly of all, Omloop and Kuurne gained by way of participation, notably by way of the sprinters: Kuurne winner and Nieuwsblad podium finisher Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck), Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek), Kuurne runner-up Olav Kooij (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Tim Merlier (Soudal-QuickStep) have been all current at one or each startlines in Belgium, having raced in on the UAE Tour.
Placing collectively a WorldTour calendar that avoids main race overlap sooner or later, as has been broadly rumoured would be the case within the 2026 reordering of the WorldTour, shouldn’t be a simple process. However on the proof of this weekend in Belgium, it is actually value making an attempt.
New division of energy in ladies’s peloton mirrored within the refusal to take duty on the street
Het Laatste Nieuws defined the shock end result of the ladies’s Omloop Nieuwsblad with plenty of sarcasm: ‘Bickering and poker between Dutch riders and a winner known as Lotte – how the Omloop was a carbon-copy of the World Championships’
The Flemish newspaper was referring to how the largest groups within the ladies’s peloton threw away their possibilities in a welter of disagreements on who would work to drag again the early break.
Ellen van Dijk of Lidl-Trek advised Cyclingnews how Saturday’s state of affairs reminded her of the disagreements within the Tokyo Olympics, gained by Austria’s Anna Kiesenhofer, because the groups handed the buck and so misplaced the race.
Full marks have been resulting from Lotte Claes (Arkéa-B&B Resorts) for her beautiful victory and day-long break and for Aurela Nerlo (Winspace Orange Seal) who went along with her after which tried to beat her with a kilometre-long dash.
The weird lack of collaboration behind, giving the early transfer a 14-minute benefit at one level, was maybe the largest single think about a hit Claes herself mentioned afterwards she may by no means have anticipated in her wildest Omloop goals.
Fairly than level particular fingers at particular groups, riders or leaders, it was clear that the brand new hierarchy in ladies’s biking was so finely balanced that it failed to supply the thrilling racing everyone had predicted would occur.
Everybody was left questioning why the highest groups did not take the initiative, and reasonably than making an attempt to assert one of many greatest prizes within the biking calendar, opted to play a disastrous ready sport as a substitute.
Alpecin-Deceuninck already on kind and that is even earlier than Mathieu van der Poel begins to race
It stays to be seen how Mathieu van der Poel performs in his shock early season debut at Le Samyn this Tuesday, however there may be doubt if his co-leaders and teammates are already firing on all cylinders, with the Opening Weekend offering a powerful reply to any doubts.
Jasper Philipsen didn’t win Saturday’s Omloop Nieuwsblad after beginning his dash too early, however the hilly race is as a lot about finding out a staff’s collective kind as it’s about people and as they marshalled the peloton to make sure a bunch dash after which rode the ultimate kilometre faultlessly. Certainly, Alpecin-Deceuninck have been very a lot in proof and management in a manner that Visma-Lease a Bike and UAE may solely handle way more sporadically.
Appropriately sufficient given their title sponsor, Sunday’s Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne was very a lot a case of ‘rinse and repeat’, solely this time with a way more well-deserved conclusion. The strain is most positively off Alpecin-Deceuninck, notably as they’re nonetheless ready for his or her Classics chief.