Predictions for 2025

With plenty going on out there events in pro cycling seem pretty tame in comparison. But here are twelve predictions for the cycling season ahead…

Who wins the Tour de France? It’s still the central question in the sport and if there was a way of knowing this today you could derive a lot of other answers to related results and beyond too. Now making a prediction in early January for events in July would be foolhardy if it involved, say, investing. But for fun here goes… and right now it feels impossible to pick a Tour de France winner, today best guess says a close contest between Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogačar but it’s a coin toss to pick between them. Many will have Pogačar first as he won so convincingly last summer and bossed the whole season but but go back a year with this logic you’d have picked Vingegaard a year ago. Since you’re reading wanting a name, well Pogačar then. What’s striking is that it’s already a two horse race in January which is a concern if one crashes or just gets Covid in summer so let’s hope the already-a-duel-scenario is hopelessly wrong and more contenders emerge.

Star riders will race less. Is it worth doing Dwars Door Vlaanderen if you want to win Roubaix or the Ronde? Loaded with hindsight but trends can start from random events. The prediction is some top riders will be submarine-like during the season, invisible for long stretches in part to avoid the crash risk. It’s nice if Jonas Vingegaard or Tadej Pogačar can win a week-long World Tour stage race but they’ve done it already so maybe just skip it to avoid disaster. This isn’t new, take Primož Roglic who has seen the full cycle, avoiding some races so as to reduce crash risk only to crash in the Tour de France where one conclusion was he needed to race more prior to hone his reflexes. But there’s another element to bolster the hypothesis: the congestion in top teams. Leaving a rider at home (or rather atop the Sierra Nevada or Teide) means someone else gets team leadership for a day or a week and so there’s a second win here for teams needing to keep their roster of riders content.

The sprinting spoils will be shared. Jonathan Milan is the most exciting prospect right now as the potential is all there, hulking power and he can do more too, watch for him in the classics as much as the Tour de France. Olav Kooij is on the up, very fast and versatile too, plus in a contract year. Biniam Girmay can win sprints and more too. Tim Merlier is a bit more of a specialist but should keep delivering while team mate Paul Magnier is promising too. Jasper Philipsen. And more. But because they’re all so good nobody will run away with the results this year and end the season as the top dog. Especially as the likes of Milan, Kooij and Merlier have to share resources with GC contenders at big races meaning they don’t get a full lead out train either. And even if Fabio Jakobsen can come back then he too will find team mates like Tobias Lund get a chance to ride the sprint train.

Women’s races get a rising audience. For all the pomp of the Tour de France Femmes, and the relaunch has been a success, the unsaid part is it’s seen some declining TV audiences (a peak audience in France of 3.3 million in 2022, 2.5 million for last summer’s Stage 8 thriller). But part of this can probably be attributed to the Olympics and summer sports-fatigue. Now back in its slot to take over when the men finish and the audiences will follow over and numbers pick up. The Tour matters of course but the trend should see more interest in the rest of the women’s calendar and this is where a lot of the growth will come. It’s not something to happen only during 2025 but the rise of women’s racing will start to displace some lesser men’s races.

XDS-Astana get relegated. They’re currently 4,717 points below 18th placed Cofidis. Win all three grand tours plus a Monument classic and they’d still be short, it sounds impossible? Actually not so. They’re not going to win a grand tour and they know it, but fourth place in ten 1.Pro races brings 1,000 points, almost as much as a grand tour and this kind of hustle can get them points galore. We’ll look at the numbers more closely soon. The idea is they’ve been on a shopping spree and signed a lot of good riders for this score often approach. But with this plan comes the problem, several signings are on one year deals and they’ll want to shine for their own reasons, namely to get a contract next year and this means riders treading on each other’s toes. Put simply the hypothesis is signing riders is necessary but not sufficient, delivering unity and performance is harder. The safer prediction to make would be it’ll be fun to watch this secondary contest as Astana have a chance, especially in case of a déconfiture at Cofidis which has lost its two top scorers and very reliant on Alex Aranburu and Emu Buchmann feeling at home from the start.

Arkéa-B&B Hotels get relegated too… but that’s the least of their worries. I’d rather not say it aloud but as this is a predictions post, alas the team looks doomed. The squad had to suddenly jettison several decent riders at the end of last year, like hot air balloonists throwing supplies overboard to stay airborne. The exit of these riders all but guarantees the team’s demotion but the question is whether they can survive beyond the year as if money is tight now this is a concern and what would happen upon relegation. The men’s World Team is the visible part but there’s a the women’s team and a a development team as well, it’d be a pity to see a structure that was trying to build up.

Tour wildcards are make-or-break. In French there’s the phrase un choix cornélien to mean a difficult choice or a dilemma. Which teams get invited to the Tour de France? There are two wildcards and three realistic picks between Tudor, Total Energies and Uno-X. Tudor with Julian Alaphilippe and Marc Hirschi look like a compulsory pick (and the company is sponsoring ASO events) so which squad gets the last pick? TotalEnergies look the weakest squad but they won a stage last summer with Anthony Turgis; Uno-X supplied “animation” but do they merit repeat invites? Both teams could be in peril without an invite, they crave the big audiences of July. The easiest solution would be to take an extra team but that only solves this question for a year, beyond that Q36.5 are on the up and so on. In short there’s a crunch coming for teams in the second tier and it applies to those wanting to start the Giro and Vuelta too.

Safety remains a contentious topic, divisive even. Jonathan Vaughter’s Twitter rage at Christian Prudhomme shows this, it was more of personal attack rather than enquiring about the substance. Only a tweet rather than a sermon but it highlights suspicion and distance rather than cohesion: people who ought to be on the same page appear to be reading different books. With teams, organisers and the UCI holding different ideas on the ways forward any progress will be slow here, and probably fraught at times too.

You know the maillot jaune, now get ready for the carton jaune as yellow cards will prove controversial. New for 2025 is the system of yellow cards where along with fines and other penalties, yellow cards can be issued. They won’t be brandished by a commissaire towering out of the sunroof, instead they’ll just get reported in the post-race bulletin (a document that’s often hard to find, even unpublished by organisers). Get two during a stage race and you’re out. So a sticky bottle here, a sideways drift there in a sprint or even sitting up to celebrate a team mate’s win and potentially that’s it, addio, adieu, adiós as a rider can be sent home. Crucially it’s not automatic and supposed to be brandished only for relating to safety but as it’s subjective expect debatable decisions.

Calendar reform is finally unveiled. This has been promised for years and always seems to be around the corner, only for each time things to stay the same. 2025 will finally see the plans unveiled. Pro cycling does have a jumbled calendar of events, confusing labels and more, so who would be against reform? Only once the fixes are announced then preferences get revealed and the plans should prove controversial as there are bound to be winners and losers.

Staying with the politics and admin David Lappartient remains at the UCI…at least until the autumn. The International Olympic Committee will pick a new president in March and cycling’s multitasker is a candidate but he won’t make it. He’s obviously good at the behind-the-scenes ways to woo a selectorate, that’s how he beat Brian Cookson to become UCI President in the first place. But the IOC is more way more political and there are several declared candidates already, including one with the implicit backing of the current chief. If so he’ll see out his current term as UCI President which comes to an end this September… but will he decide his work is done and make way for someone else? Some of this depends on whether the calendar reform prediction comes true.

Trying to think of tech changes and there’s not much in the pipeline, no 13 speed or some emerging trend. One observation is that if last year was the year of 165mm cranks, this year is the season of gigantic waterbottles. The move to ever higher amounts of carbohydrate consumption in races means this is also de rigeur in training too. Only riders can’t post soigneurs beside the road or have a scooter following them with a box full of bidons. So look for team-issue bikes fitted with cycle-touring bottle cages to fit one litre more bottles, at least for training. The humble 500ml bidon still lives on for racing but the musette is probably on its way out, there’s no less need for cotton bags these days as staff hand up bidons with energy mix and gels taped to the bottle.

Finally we’ll see rider retirements… with a difference. Most continue in the sport until they can’t get a contract any more even if the results tail off – see Sagan or Froome – but the prediction here is for big names to walk away from the sport because they’re done, even if teams are queuing for their services brandishing fat contracts. See Grace Brown last year, she won in Liège and became Olympic and World time trial champion and quit, taking her rainbow jersey with her for the year, although at the age of 32. Expect to see more of this from younger riders who feel they’ve got all they wanted from the sport including financial security so they can leave early. But we’ll see if this happens in 2025 or if it’s more for beyond.