This Saturday’s openingsweekend is always a hard one to preview, the season opens with a race that is open to many too. Here’s a wider look at things ahead of the cobbled classics season…
Getting the band back together
There’s plenty of talk of Soudal-Quickstep becoming the “wolfpack” of old. Now they’ve said goodbye to Evenepoel they can pivot back to one day races and become a force in the spring classics again. Easier said than done? Yes because they had the best classics riders in the day. As well as Evenepoel saving their classics season in recent years thanks to wins in the Brabantse Pijl or Liège, Tim Merlier has won as well for them only he’s likely to be out for all the classics. Which leaves a lot of pressure on the shoulders of Paul Magnier and if he’s oblivious to this now, that might be different after days of questions on the front pages of the Belgian newspapers. Magnier and colleagues like Stuyven and Van Baarle can deliver some wins and soon too and more so this side of the Tour of Flanders by which time it could be tool late.
Arnaud De Lie has a tidy palmarès already for a 23 year old. But can he deliver in the Flemish classics? His real speciality is a slow speed sprint up a hill that’s not too steep. Which is why he’s won World Tour races like the GP Québec and Bretagne Classic. However he’s “only” got a collection of 1.1 rated races in Belgium for the most part. The pressure has got to him before. He told L’Equipe last July he had to stop riding the bike in spring and had a “huge feeling of disgust towards cycling” and at times “I hated what I was doing”. So you can only wish a spring campaign on his terms but perhaps a win would make him happier and the “new” uphill finish of Nokere Koerse suits him, a springboard to more. There’s a challenge for his team to get him there too. Unlike Magnier, one thing that makes life harder is team support and having colleagues on hand for the final hour of racing and Lotto-Intermarché look thin here.
The E3 Saxo Classic
The Tour of Flanders is a cherished national event. Paris-Roubaix is a wild and unique conclusion to the cobbled classics. But the E3 Saxo Bank, aka Harelbeke, is often the best day’s racing. It’s a pity the event often resorts to shock posters to get attention, it could just self-proclaim as the best Flemish classic. Why? It’s a big event with top names in peak form but not a 250km Monument either and so there’s room for surprises and a willingness from participants to take risks. It’s often packed with action to the point where it should be on a weekend rather than a ThursdayFriday but is the outlier race as it has a local organising committee rather than being part of the Flanders Classics portfolio.
UCI points
You won’t leap out of bed keen to know who finishes 22nd or 44th in the Ronde Van Brugge – you can even be excused for not knowing which race this is as it has changed course and name – but whoever does stands to collect 50 and 25 UCI points respectively. Ignore “we’re racing for results” talk as every rider and team is after these ranking points. And there are some big hauls waiting in the coming weeks. What this means is lesser places can be battled for, riders who are out of the picture for the podium can still get a derivative result and when you see a group come in for 30th place the sprint is real.
Red Bull?
Remember Red Bull’s cobbled classics season last year? Me neither. They spent big to assemble a squad but the wheels came off. The training didn’t go right and they had their share of misfortune. If they can turn this around then it should make the racing better with more teams involved and able to combat any UAE / Alpecin monopoly and supply competition to Visma-LAB and Lidl-Trek. Plus Ineos always look to be a force in the classics but haven’t been consistent, maybe this time too?
Recovery tales
Can Wout van Aert and Mads Pedersen recover in time? Their count down is well into April for the Ronde and Roubaix “Holy Week” so there are signs they can. Some of the coverage will be obvious – “cyclist spotted training” – but it adds to stories between now and April as these two already have an uphill task just to take on Van der Poel and Pogačar.
Flanders-Baloise
At the other end of the team budget scale is Flanders-Baloise. The team started over 20 years ago and has had a mission to bring on Flemish riders. The kit is so retro you wonder if it’s part if the incentive to move up to a World Tour team and dress sharper. Among those that have secured promotion are Milan Fretin, Arne Marit, Dries Van Gestel, Tim Declerq, Yves Lampaert and Thomas De Gendt. Only it’s the team’s final season, the end of the road awaits and with it a touch of nostalgia and even more incentives for them to flood the early breakaway.
The ghost of Evenepoel
Open a Flemish newspaper – as in Het Laatse Nieuws or Nieuwsblad – and it’s Remco this, Remco that. If he uploads a recovery ride to Strava there will be articles about it and even parsing the ride title for meaning. Only he’s a Tour de France contender and so far not slated to do a single cobbled classic. But he could still ride the Ronde and his presence would be a boost for the local media so expect the chorus for him to start to get louder.
The Media
Just as L’Equipe is great reading in July, Het Laatse Nieuws and Nieuwsblad are essential in March and April. Even Nieuwsblad’s topical cartoonist Marec swaps coverage of politicians, personalities or the US ambassador to draw sharp sketches about Van der Poel or Van Aert. Cycling is front page news for a sustained period in a way it just isn’t anywhere else on the planet.
The TV coverage is excellent too. For all the Flemish and Walloon divides, both Sporza and RTBF share a relaxed style where they’re not afraid of silences and prefer to to let the picture talk even at busy times. But they’re clued in, for a random example RTBF’s On Connait Nos Classiques preview show mentioned Van der Poel and Van Aert would resume racing this weekend but not Neilson Powless who was injured, and all days before these riders and their teams issued press releases to say this.
The Fourth Grand Tour
A lazy catch-all but we do get a long period of racing with different days for different riders if we include the Ardennes. Again it’s the way this is a national event for the population that makes it special. One lament here though is how many races are concentrated in the same small space – a blog research project is to map all the overlap this spring. The Tour of Flanders just doesn’t tour Flanders and many other races don’t stray much further either, often criss-crossing the same roads and climbs. But there’s a reason and it packs in a lot of action and so you’re not tuning in for the sprint finish with 10 minutes to go.
Not the cobbled classics
There’s plenty on elsewhere. Even if you had some primitive television that required you to stand up, walk over and manually retune it to change channels you’d do it because you can watch other races too (assuming it could receive but that’s another rabbit hole). This weekend’s Drôme-Ardèche double header sees plenty of good names in action and likewise with stage races like Catalunya and the Basque Country worth swapping over. It would be a loss if Lenny Martinez, Egan Bernal or Christian Scaroni had to ride Kuurne this Sunday; likewise if Arnaud De Lie, Biniam Girmay or Soren Waerenskjold could only ride the Faun-Ardèche Classic. Work your remote, swap browser tabs or multiscreen as it’s a busy time of year and enjoy these different paths.
Kopecky vs Wiebes
Yes they’re team mates but can they ride together? A year ago Lotte Kopecky had dreams of yellow jerseys but it didn’t work out and so she seems to be reverting to what she’s best at and we’ll see what this brings in the classics and how she can ride with the seemingly invincible Lorena Wiebes. It’s a nice problem to have for SD Worx but the team fronting for a human resources business has struggled with some of this before.
Belgo-sadism
Many races take place in appealing places and are means to explore stunning landscapes. And there’s the Flemish classics. Now before anyone comments, places like Bruges, Gent have plenty of charm, especially for an off-season visit to sample frieten and beer; Lille is a real turnaround story too. For cycle tourism the appeal is more limited, it’s flatter, windswept, muddy, the betonweg roads are hard going and if you’re not racing then the cycle paths are obligatory which is nice that they have them but the obligation can deprive you of the race-like scenario of speeding into a climb. It’s still worth trying to see for yourself too but repeat tourism must be limited compared to Mont Ventoux or the Dolomites. But for the racing there’s a sadistic element of watching the peloton on these roads, often in grim weather, while sat somewhere warm.
Thanks. I love the E3 classic, with kids on the side of the roads and the Kwaremont without VIP lodges. Thought it’s always been on friday.
And yes, Giro di Sardegna is offering wonderful postcards of sunny beaches, but for the coming weeks all I want is foggy flat land, cold winds and muddy hills.
Friday it is, had this year’s date but was looking at a calendar from 2025 for other reasons.
It’s one of the best and most unpredictable weekends of the year with surprises in store. If either OHN or KBK comes down to a big bunch sprint (likely) the favourites will be Philipsen, Girmay, Magnier, Meeus, Brennan… If not the bunch sprint, it’s MVDP. It’s also hard to see how UAE can win, which makes a nice change.
A real long shot if he can be there for the sprint – a very big if, I know – is Hobbs. He seems to have the speed but does he have the support and guile.
Add Milan at kbk
Hobbs is a neo-pro to watch here and interesting to see the talk of Marijn Van den Berg already being deployed as a lead-out for him.
UAE can try to blow the race apart and launch Wellens on Saturday. But a big ask.
Ssshhhhh…..
“One lament here though is how many races are concentrated in the same small space – a blog research project is to map all the overlap this spring.”
That would be a fun project! I do GIS for work, make lots of maps. My goto software is QGIS and OpenStreetMaps, both free. Does SanlLuca or veloviewer or other sites have the routes in some kind of downloadable format? Or would the route have to be traced from the organizers pdfs?
Think I can probably get the .KML. The E3 offers this for free.
Annoying Flanders Classics don’t make the routes accessible, eg you even have to register/email sign up but there are other versions around. We’ll see if it’s worth a blog, the short version is it’ll look like a bowl of spaghetti on a small area and the rest of Flanders is not covered much. Maybe some visual display still illustrates this.
Kml files are definitely a good starting data set.
All the overlapping races make a very challenging dataset to visualize well – a fun puzzle to think about! While you could colour a road segment by the number of times any race uses it, if you want to show similarities between races you could assign each race a colour and use more advanced styling like transparency and offset lines, or use animation.
A heat map might be a good way to represent it
Download a racer’s Strava routes?
Laflammerouge? Long time not visited but they used to be tracing essentially everything, often even before the official route was out (and nailing it!).
Somebody among the people in charge was a bit confused as far as economy or politics are concerned, which led to some fuss, but that shouldn’t prevent from appreciating their work (if it’s still on).
For me the Spring one day races are one of the highlights of the season. Thank you INRNG for the preview. I am going to struggle for TV coverage which is a shame.
Crickey.
Since the demise of gcn cycling tv coverage we no longer have any way to watch these races that does not involve jumping through hoops which i can’t be bothered doing. So reading your upcoming races is a but frustrating.
YouTube highlights is all i can get.
You never know how good something is until its taken away.
Other than a few events with way to much time spent on advertising on SBS the best coverage we get is cyclocross. Because they all tend to be put on Youtube.
In Australia we get a selection of the classics on free TV, but I don’t like the local commentary, and also like to watch all the races, not just GW and up.
I subscribe to flosports for 2 months, and use a VPN. Not a high cost to get all the races during this time.
Escape Collective have a great chart showing how to watch races depending on where you are. It made me consider a strategic approach to the ridiculously expensive flobikes. How many races can I fit in the perfectly placed one month subscription…
I’m in slightly better place as prices are more affordable (18 US$/month while Flobike was some unbelievable 30 if I recall it right) but it’s still crazy as Spain is one of cycling’s absolute hotbeds, yet I’m groaning as I see myself forced to pay four months instead of three if I want to stretch things from Omloop to the last decisive Giro stages. Heck, just a mere couple of days.
Got to blame my MvdP fanboy attitude combined with a deep nostalgic desire to see once more the Kapelmuur-Bosberg combo as the big finale of a race, I guess.
Yet it makes you wonder when you see that in Spain not only the cobbled season won’t get any mass broadcasting (including the Ronde), but neither will Strade Bianche, Sanremo or the Giro, and there are currently (absurd) doubts about LBL or Itzulia. Until June, you get Pa-Ni, Catalunya, Roubaix and the Vuelta a España Women – was anyone asking for a simplified calendar? Here you go!
It’s worth noticing that cycling is often the most watched show on Spanish pay-TVs, which barring isolated exceptions tend to score extremely low figures – mostly in the range of 20K. So you can see why they’re interested in cycling which can easily bring in 40-50-60K viewers (or even average nearly 90K for the men’s Vuelta despite it being also available for free on national broadcasting).
What I fail to see is how cycling as a sport could be interested in reducing to crumble its market of potential spectators, which instead when on public broadcasting is measured in hundreds of K and often hitting the M mark. Plus, the close-to-random, fragmented selection of races prevents mass market to be even remotely able to perceive a narrative, rivalries, or just catching the meaning of what they’re watching, which ultimately will lead to a drop in viewers, given that other media, except for El País, are doing little to sustain the sport (why should they?). I mean, as a sport you can afford to go pay if you feel assured that what isn’t watched outside the paywall is still broadly shared and commented by other TV show (general news), press, social media… not cycling’s case, so becoming in-visible equals sheer suicide.
And what totally puzzles me is what I find checking what the public broadcaster RTVE still publishes as the calendar with “all the main sporting events for 2026”, irrespective whether they broadcast them or not (although of course they specify which ones they’re going to broadcast).
Well, the whole list, broadcast or not, is quite a selected shortlist, averaging a dozen of events for month or so, so don’t imagine they’re encompassing everything, quite the other way around.
And… you’ve got a lot of cycling included! Starting with Het Volk. So you can notice how cycling is still something which is installed in the sporting journalist mind as a “basic goods” of sort (with their ahem peculiarities throughout the selection), but at the same time commercial deals are pushing it away from mass audience, which, as I said, will imply irrelevance (I’m wondering how do organisers expect to be able to put up a race when people generally won’t care at all about cycling, but I guess this sort of long term perspective isn’t fancy).
https://www.rtve.es/deportes/20260101/calendario-deportivo-2026-agenda-mensual/16867347.shtml
This
GB£30 here, or possibly £23 if you have the right broadband provider. Think I might skip the Omloop and start the subscription before Strade Bianche to get the Giro in within 3 months.
I actually think we seem to have a pretty good deal in Australia compared to others. I guess whether you like certain commentary is a personal thing, the SBS team don’t drive me around the wall like some other commentators (looking at you C9 cricket commentators) but as IR notes above, a bit of silence now and then wouldn’t be a bad thing at all. Timing is a consideration as well. I only have a few late nights watching cycling in me these days.
The race organisers (most of them) share your frustrations. Most races struggle to get shown on any platform. The preferred outcome for most race organisers is that the race is shown on free-to-air television. But in many markets there is no television channel willing to show the race, since the audiences are pretty small. This is why it ends up on subscription channels, most of which pay a pittance for the rights.
And where you could get a big audience and the national broadcasters is well willing to buy (at a reasonable price), top organisers sell the exclusive to pay-channels
-___-
That really does not happen.
For instance, in the UK, many people are upset that the Tour de France is no longer on free-to-air television. But the channel which broadcast it up to this year saw the audience figures were so low that they did not want to keep showing it. ASO could not get a deal even if they gave away the show for free. The audience for other races is even smaller. (And the UK market is pretty large).
The BBC has the rights to the Cyclocross world championship (part of a deal for all UCI championships). And they decided not to show the race on any channel since the demand was so low. Eurosport (or their brand in the UK) would have been willing to show it on their pay-per-view channel, but didn’t have the rights.
It happens in Italy, France and Spain.
In France with L’Equipe TV, not a public broadcaster.
Cycling bests the audience of most alternative on the same channel and daytime, and it was not expensive, either. Or at least not in euros for eyeballs.
RCS chose the then more lucrative ES deal which implied exclusive rights, but they had previously been able to find a price tag satisfactory both for them and RTVE/L’Equipe.
It was a strategic decision.
Flanders Classics decided to raise price a lot and with no clear advantage for the buyers who then told them “no deal” after having bought for years with mutual satisfaction in Italy. In Spain it had always been more difficult, which made raising prices even more absurd.
Cycling audience are on a downward trend in most countries, BUT the downward curve is *less steep* then general TV viewership. In other words, share keeps decent or even improves.
Obviously becoming a niche is a process which reinforces itself, but in the case of the above named countries we can historically establish if egg or chicken came first, the sequence of events is pretty clear.
I agree that in the UK cycling probably never broke the barrier from niche to mass, despite some peak monents.
How do they know demand is so low if they don’t show it? And why not show it if you’ve already paid for it?
The BBC show some track cycling and the world road championships. The cyclocross is sold with these events in a bundle. They know how many people watch the other events, and make an educated guess about the cyclocross, given the viewing figures for the World Cup events on Eurosport.
The viewing figures in the UK for the Tour de France, free-to-air, are well known. It gets lower numbers than the typical cheap afternoon tat they show the rest of the year. The broadcaster was making a loss from showing it. This is sad, but true.
Coppi1949: there can be two things there. One is taking up space on the schedules when other show could get a larger audience. The other is having the rights is one thing but ITV have added costs by sending presenters and camera crew to France etc and then producing this; it wasn’t the old model of taking the video and adding commentary on top.
PS. The evening highlights of the Tour in the UK were getting under 400,000 viewers (for an evening show). The live action was, I think, well under 100,000.
The frustration for me is that ITV didn’t seem to wait for things to normalise post-GCN. Until last year, I’d had a few good years of GCN and then Eurosport, which I assume cycling fans generally preferred due to the lack of adverts compared to ITV. It therefore seems very natural for viewers to decline over that period, but perhaps keen fans represent a small proportion of their viewers?
I’m sure it’s a rational business decision but a surprise they didn’t even contemplate a more streamlined programme and/or some kind of shared agreement with other broadcasters (for example, SBS Australia), especially as the numbers you provide below seem decent for a secondary channel in 2025.
Perhaps we’re too small an audience, but I agree with others that it’s tough to see any kind of narrative to the season when there’s such a fragmented approach to broadcasting (unless you pay a lot of money to TNT). Many potential viewers will now just make do with crumbs via YouTube highlights (and get used to this approach), which can’t be good for the sport.
The curtain raiser to all this for me will be the Melbourne to Warrnambool (delayed this year due to fires). What it lacks in star power it makes up for with a cracking final section.
I did notice with passing interest several hours of the Warrny on SBS. Definitely worth a look I think.
Are we still allowed to say Happy Het Volk day??
I enjoy all these “new” races but the Northern Classics will always be the start of the season for me