Mathieu van der Poel rides away on the Muur van Geraardsbergen. His breakaway companions are out of the picture and from here on the result felt inevitable.
What colours do you associated with Belgium? Black, yellow and red are on the flag. Football fans will say the “red devils”. But for cycling fans the palette is grey, brown and green. Muddy fields, barren trees and brown brick homes sit under leaden skies. Watching the Sporza coverage Helicopter shots of houses with solar panels suggest wild optimism. Of course summer happens in Belgium too, it’s just that’s rarely televised.
After one early move failed, five got away in Clément Alleno (Burgos-BH), Alexys Brunel (Total), Alexis Renard (Cofidis), Vincent Van Hemelen (Vlaanderen-Baloise) with Jelte Krijnsen (Jayco) who had been in the first move. Forlorn? With hindsight they all had foresight as Renard would hold out for a top-10 and precious UCI points, while Krijnsen and Vincent Van Hemelen salvaged a top-20.
Finishing today meant surviving and one feature of this year’s edition were the multiple crashes with riders going down like pins in a bowling alley strike. The “new” course was supposed to split the field up but it was more a tweak than a radical redesign. Either way the race didn’t open up early. You could see the stress in other ways as flags slapped in the wind and a compact peloton raced hard into the danger points . At times the course was less cobbled sectors and more a wooden chopping block as riders were butchered. Others had mechanicals and other problems, game over for the likes of Tom Pidcock, Paul Magnier and Jasper Philipsen with over 60km to go.
Kasper Asgreen took a flyer on the Wolvenberg but he was by himself and his move didn’t have the effect of poking a wasps nest. Instead the decisive point came on the Molenberg with 46km to go. Florian Vermeersch was lead out by his team and went hard. Behind Tudor’s Rick Pluimers led the chase but he wiped out on a corner, his back wheel jack-knifed and in one pedal stroke he was floored. Mathieu van der Poel was on his wheel but swerved like the Matrix’s Neo around Pluimer’s head. Van der Poel even unclipped his left foot but you needed slow-mo to spot this as he reconnected with the pedals and turned on the power in an instant. Red Bull’s Tim van Dijk managed to stay in contact. Behind others lost the race in this split second. A Visma rider unclipped too but halted, this blocked others and the gap formed as Van der Poel, Vermeersch and Van Dijk were clear.
The trio bridged across to the breakaway and the lead five suddenly got what they’d dreamed of as they were able to hitch a ride on the race-winning move, albeit only for a while.
Visma tried to chase but they were down on riders and few other teams had numbers to chase. Lotto-Intermarché were helping too until a crash took out Arnaud De Lie.
Geraardsbergen’s Muur came and Van der Poel didn’t attack, he just rode away as the slope kicked up on the way out of town leaving Vermeersch and Van Dijk to race for second place.
The Bosberg as the final climb is often home to suspense. Not necessarily decisive but a place where doubt can still exist and opportunities can be seized. Can the solo rider hold on? Can the breakaway riders make it? Would a move here work? This time it hardly featured and looked like a mere cobbled boulevard on the way to Ninove.
The Verdict
No surprises. Marec, Nieuwblad’s cartoonist had it right, this morning’s newspaper sketched Van der Poel sitting alone at the finish with time to read the newspaper. Van der Poel made it look as easy in real life, escaping when the field slowed down behind, then appearing to ride away in Geraardsbergen.
Van der Poel’s swerve around Pluimers helped to set things up but had Pluimers stayed upright the result would have probably been the same given the Dutchman was in position and primed to move. Maybe a Visma rider would have been able to join the attack? Otherwise there were few moves, and alas a lot of the action came because of crashes rather than attacking.
Van der Poel will know nobody has ever won the Omloop and Ronde in the same year. These anecdotes tend to interest the media more than riders but with his first win in this race now done, his big goal has to be the “holy week” double of the Ronde and Roubaix.
Van Dijk was satisfied with his ride and it’s his best result in a classic. Better still it feels as if we’ve already seen more of Red Bull on the cobbles than last year. Vermeersch gets his first podium in a spring classic too.
Christophe Laporte came in for fourth place and the “chocolate medal” ought to taste good after a long absence from Flemish roads. His Dutch team came up empty but looked strong collectively and without the Molenberg mishap they could have shaped the race more.
Finally a mention of events 800km to the south. Paul Seixas won the Faun-Ardèche classic. The main climb of the day was the Mur des Royes, a backroad version of the Col de Gazareau and it was here with 45km to go that Seixas gradually rode the field off his wheel before dropping last witness Matteo Jorgenson with 41km remaining. He rode the final hour solo for the win.
Thank you INRNG.
I am in GB so no free to air coverage and only the printed result after the event.
Same for Spain, and Italy also dropped it after having had it broadcast for many years.
On the contrary, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark had the race broadcast on free access TVs (only the men’s race in Denmark).
What’s sure is that this way the race lost many spectators, probably some 15-20% of their European total, but maybe race sponsors aren’t much interested in those markets and prefer to gamble asking for a higher price tag – which OTOH obviously enough doesn’t make as much sense in Italy as in the other countries named above (even less so in Spain).
I can understand there’s no deal between organisers and broadcasters.
But who are really losing in this situation, besides fans? Teams with sponsors interested in Italian or Spanish markets, or which do at least seem very interested, as – outside cycling -they already pay big money for conventional ads on general TV or roadsides etc. (for Het Volk: Alpecin, Decathlon, EF, LIDL, Trek, Red Bull, Hansgrohe, Quickstep, Cofidis, Q36.5, Burpellet, BH, Tudor, Total… as far as I know). And the sport as a whole: it makes no sense to spend ink and easy talking about calendar reform, season-long narratives, big stars racing more and maybe against each other and so on and on… if, at the end of the day, a WT race like this just gives up on a big share of its well established public.
If organisers and broadcasters don’t find a match, they might be helped to do so by other stakeholders.
Neither TV2 Sport X nor Eurosport 2 is free to access in Denmark
Thanks, I thought TV2 was.
In Denmark TV2 used to be free-to-air, but only DR is now. And DR has severely down-prioritized cycling. One of the former DR commentators used the term “pogi-poisoned” as reason they only air Postnord DanmarkRundt and the national Danish championships.
If you want to watch cycling in Denmark its TV2 and Eurosport/MAX. And pay for it.
#Mikael
Technically, TV 2 isn’t free-to-air, but if you have a standard cable package in Denmark, it’s included in the bundle — for 99% of viewers I would guess. At least the main channels, that also carry the bigger races.
And the discussion about Pogacar has nothing to do with DR stepping away from cycling. DR’s reduced involvement has been a gradual process over the past decade, happening alongside increased investment and focus from TV 2 (which also introduced full start-to-finish coverage of the Tour) and Eurosport. The comment about “Pog” was made in a separate discussion about the broader decline in cycling audiences.
@Mikael and @Thomas Krogh
(Not that you’re defending the following, just answering to the thread)
Relating supposedly declining TV audience to Pogačar’s superiority is really small talk.
To start with, there are way more relevant factors: despite all that truism on the TDF being the big cake in the sport, I believe that the TDF also lives on the generic interest in cycling as a sport, especially outside France. In Italy and Spain people are interested in the TDF *if* they are interested in cycling. It might even be the only race somebody actually watches (very uncommon), yet people with no interest in cycling nowadays just won’t watch the TDF in these two countries (in Spain it was hugely different 30 yrs ago, but, hey, that was 30 yrs ago!). In Italy the above (people watching without specific interest in cycling) stands true for the Giro, although the trend of less generic spectators and more cycling fans is ongoing in this case, too.
Access as a big impact on the above. You won’t follow a sport which is being broadcast less and less, which also implies that media won’t be as keen to talk about it in generic sport newsfeeds and so on.
If that’s happening in Italy and in Spain, imagine UK…and I’ve just learnt in this same conservation that in Denmark there are access issues, too.
In that sense, people should also differentiate trends from circumstances, and big shift from meaningless fluctuations. Italy is on a long term trend of very slow decline in viewership which looks like stability on a year to year basis. Pogačar is totally irrilevant, he even had a positive effect for the Giro and Lombardia despite dominating, as well as, more obviously, on Sanremo.
The TDF hit a decade-record global audience in 2023, the fact that it drops in 2025 is hardly a trend of sort.
It’s also worth noting that TDF 2025 was terrible audience-wise during the first week, then it recovered and even touched positive peaks. So, curiously, people looked less interested when you could at least hope in an open race…
I suspect that (as it’s long been typical) most people talking about TV ratings are mainly using that sort of argument to try and sell us some other very different point of sort, often related to more or less vested interests. When you check the arguments in detail, they rarely resist scrutiny.
#gabriele
I agree with most of your points, but…
The discussion I referred to was based on last year’s audience figures. With the exception of a “Lipowitz spike” in Germany, most major markets were down. I’ll try to locate the exact figures and sources when I get a spare moment.
Personally, I think the idea of “Pogacar poisoning” is hugely exaggerated. Viewing numbers have been stagnant or declining for some time, largely in parallel with reduced broadcasting coverage. Even without Pogacar, I suspect the overall trend would have looked much the same.
Does that mean he has no impact at all? I’m less certain about that. I’m fortunate to have access to TV2’s broad cycling coverage in Denmark, but I don’t have time to watch everything. I therefore choose races based on where I expect the most compelling competition — and for me that means unpredictability. Lat year I did skip Strade Bianche, Lombardia, the Worlds, and most of the Tour (the 2025 edition was by far the one I’ve watched least of in the past 20 years), largely because Pogacar was such an overwhelming favourite and the 2024 editions were utterly uninspiring. On the other hand, I did watch — and greatly enjoy — MSR and PR, “despite Pogacar,” if you like.
For me, it’s about finding races that feel genuinely competitive, rather than ones decided by two-, four-, or six-minute margins. Can that be generalised? Probably not directly. I also recognise that this kind of dominance can attract viewers who simply want to watch the very best — much like Tiger Woods did for golf for a number of years.
But overall? I’m not convinced. My instinct is that he may turn off more viewers than he attracts through sheer dominance. Another factor is that UAE appears to be the most disliked team in the peloton which in turn may turn off some viewers, while others may join in the – often vain – hope to see sportswashing be crushed.
From a media perspective, at least, it hasn’t had any noticeable impact on TV2’s programming. They will broadcast the Tour as usual, and Pogacar’s presence — or absence — has so far not appeared to play any role in their planning.
@Thomas Krogh
I’ve not the data at hand, but I believe that for 2025 TDF after a terrible first week not only Germany but also France recovered and ended up with decent figures, while Italy could be considered as stable with a marginal decline. Spain is deeply worrying, of course, but, as I said, that depends mostly on other middle to long term factors. In Spain’s case it’s particularly evident that the reduction in broadcasting is a cause of diminishing audiences rather than a consequence; or, better said, that it’s not a great strategy to cut off general broadcasting hoping that if you leave out some less watched races and keep the TDF & C. all will go on steady and fine.
The Netherlands had a great 2024, so it’s more about being a market with great fluctuations.
I’d agree that dominant teams or riders normally boost the audience in their country (alas, which is not quite significant if it’s Slovenia) but have a negative overall impact. Heck, that even happened with Merckx himself! Yet, my point is this sort of situations happen from time to time in most sports, for a range of reasons, and, indeed, they imply different kinds of positive or negative effects. So, what really matters is how the sport as a whole can take advantage of any given cycle, plus, of course, keeping a strong strategy to defend its assets (mainly intangible ones) beyond changing circumstances.
I’d say that cycling’s viewing figures has issues which depend on broader and deeper reasons than Pogacar, so focussing on him could even be misleading; even if, in case we translate it into a slightly different angle, like, “excessive difference between superteams and the rest”, that might finally make more sense. The above applies to more general questions like “long solos”, which are treated as Pogacar’s trademark but which are actually also produced by Remco, Mathieu, Mads, Seixas – and Vingegaard, of course. However, as I said, even these more abstract perspectives are probably quite far from the core factors (related to TV audience) which the sport should probably tackle, first and foremost the absolute lack of any sort of common strategy. I’d also add several flaws in communicating to the vaster public how great is some of the racing we’re actually having, precisely as too much focus has been placed on the TDF instead of fostering a more complex vision of the sport. As for other aspects, I think that the sport which has been doing pretty well from this POV is maybe tennis, rather than F1 or even football, often associated to extreme wealth but both plagued with serious issues.
For the Tour de France, surveys show that one-third watch for the racing and two-thirds watch for pictures of the countryside (and towns/churches/castles etc).
@John
It makes sense, albeit probably a bit exaggerated.
LBL spectators in France sit around the 1.3M mark and we may consider that they’re essentially the pure sport fans, or anyway the sort of people who watches cycling if it’s broadcast. The race is on public TV and it’s ASO but it’s not in France and it’s been decades since a French won it, although of course…
Alaph (as close as it gets 😉 ), Bardet or Gaudu offered some sparks of hope in recent years. I doubt people are watching for the landscape, and it’s not a more general cultural legend as Roubaix, either. It’s not been a race for everybody’s taste, with long predictable solos for four editions now (I liked ’em all, though). Let me add that it’s on France 3 and in France, too, as in other European countries, you get more spectators on 1 or 2.
So, the TDF averaged 3.8M in 2025 with a final 9% increase over 2024, hence – considering that the TDF will attract more cycling fans than LBL – 2/3 vs. 1/3 is exaggerated probably due to rounding up or some psychosocial effect in the answers – exaggerated, but, as I said, a meaningful representation of reality all the same (call it a 60-40 or even a 55-45 if you please, howevee what matters is that a clear majority is watching beyond any specific interest in the sport of cycling as such).
@Thomas Krogh Researching for the above brought me to the TDF 2025 French data which, as I said, look good for the three weeks, despite a poor first one. So, France and Germany which both bring well over 1M viewers (France much more of course) were clearly growing, Italy was essentially stable (1-2 points down), hence we might say that among big watchers we should worry about Spain and the Netherlands, although the latter had grown notably in 2024.
So, summin’ it up as “most major markets were down” is technically acceptable but doesn’t properly mirror reality.
I’d rather say that one risk the sport (just this sport? Just sports?) is facing is the strengthening of national factors which implies reinforcing of national scope in the broadcasting at expense of a more broad narrative encompassing cycling as a whole, plus more brutal cycles of growth and fall related to national athletes. It always was a factor, obviously, but now the impact could be greater.
Finally, an analysis on Lombardia’s national audience across a decade which shows that no “boring Pogi” effect is clearly there to be seen. And, as I had forwarded some time ago, if you check cycling’s figures against general TV watching you can even have some surprises: steady audience means growing share. It doesn’t mean that cycling shouldn’t care, as it’s so much bound to traditional TV, but it also means that many results depend more on media landscape rather than on what happens within the sport. Plus, any growth in absolute viewing figures actually implies a much stronger performance by the sport of cycling than it looks at first sight (growing against an ebb flow).
I forgot the link:
https://cyclinside.it/pogacar-sta-uccidendo-il-ciclismo-i-dati-auditel-dicono-no/
gabriele,
The main channel (TV2) is subscribed to by most households, but its sport channels are not. I can’t find figures for how many subscribe to them, but it’s a minority. Their sports package is more expensive than Max/Eurosport, I think it costs around 30€ monthly.
So am I. Seeing the headlines yesterday that Van der Poel had won, the expected result, I didn’t mind too much not having seen it but now reading Inrng’s report I’m rather wishing I had been able to.
PS This may sound odd but, having had to end my Eurosport/Discovery+/TNT subscription due to the massive price rise, I’m finding not only that I’m missing seeing the actual racing action but that I’m missing (most of!) the commentators. I’d often have cycling on in the background more like a radio broadcast, only paying full attention to the screen when exciting moments were happening. Hence, even if I could work out how to use a VPN, I don’t think watching broadcasts from countries in languages other than English would work for me because the commentary is just as important as the pictures. It’s a pity there’s no free radio-only coverage for cycling, like the BBC does for Formula One.
You can get a lot in English for free over VPN from SBS in Australia. Strade is on next Saturday, but not all (any?) of the Belgian classics.
if you get a VPN and subscribe to Discovery + germany you can watch the coverage with english commentary.
Seixas has begun boring everybody too soon, in every sense! 😉
But he had me watching a race I didn’t use to, perhaps also in order to make sense of the suscription I paid mainly in order to watch live as MvdP spared Pluimer’s head (errata corrige: serve > swerve in the Matrix sentence).
Just like Pogi, it seems Seixas is choosing lace shoes, as very very old style as the ones Pogi used before DMT offered more technological versions of the lace concept.
On a different note, I always find curious how teams and brands other than Bianchi recur to shades of “Celeste Bianchi” from time to time. I’ve got a long-standing emotional bind with the brand, but it’s not like it’s really the best colour ever and, what is worst, it’s not easy to make it work with other colours – especially BLUE (both in Bahrain and Decathlon’s case). So, while I perceive it’s a must of sort for Bianchi and an identity asset for the brand, which can become much more present without paying for a second-name on the jersey, yet I really can’t understand why others go that way. I think I remember something from Leopard Trek several years ago, and Specialized when working for Omega Pharma, perhaps?
Laces are old style but with riders looking for aero gains “faster” than shoes with extruding Boa dials so we’re seeing more riders opting for laces or if this isn’t possible with their team or personal shoe sponsorship, then some sort of aero covering to smooth out the shoe.
Yesterday’s also rans will be looking for better at today’s KBK and, without MVDP, might well find it
Seixas boring everyone too soon? Maybe today too but, after forty years without a TdF win, most of France won’t care.
My error. Seixas isn’t racing today.
There was a deal that if he did well yesterday he’d have today off. It wasn’t quite as transactional as that sounds but he’s got all he could want from the weekend so no need for more.
I wrote that tongue-in-cheek, as most know here I’m actually in favour of most long solo attacks, and Seixas is an exciting prospect – my only doubts are really about the demand of pro sport at an earlier and earlier age, but that’s not about him only; plus, many lucky individual can cope with more than most people at that same age, and better, too – Seixas, at least superficially, looks like one of those.
Of course his attack deprived the last, say 30 or 40 minutes of racing of much interest, but what some people – probably exagerately used to much cycling of the ’10s – tend to forget is that such an attack has made the previous hour or so way more interesting than it would have been otherwise, as the attack was prepared by the team, built by Seixas little by little (in a pretty unconventional manner, more Remco or Vandenbroucke than Pogi, really), and then sustained with real suspense (Lenny and Christen had come tantalisingly close) before the rope finally snapped for good (and we still had to discover if the chasers would be able to do better once they became a trio).
The sheer, real possibility of something like this materialising on the road can keep the keen spectator watching for the last 90-120 minutes, although eventually many will switch to something else for the last 30 (or not – for some reason I wanted to watch the podium, this time!). Ten years ago turning on your TV for the last 5 kms (less than 10 minutes) *on a route like this* would have been the default winning bet.
(Please note that this specific race has changed important details of the course and has had any sort of finale. I remember a reduced sprint from 2016 or 2017 because it was an Italian triple, all decently fast men who can climb a little, the sort of riders which Italian U23 system produced tons of… but you had long solo moves by the likes of Cavagna or Bardet etc. What I mean with the above is that if an educated fan had seen the current route 10 yrs ago, they’d have watched *only the very last ten 10 minutes*, and reasonably so. That’s very different today).
Oh well, I should have specified “used to TDF and the likes during the 10s” because of course at the Giro, at several one week stage races and in a number of Classics, too, middle or long range attacks never stopped being a thing.
But for a short period somebody spread the idea that you’d made great TV with some predictable 10 mins flurry of attacks (in the best case – if not, then an uphill sprint or a single killer attack, only shorter than today’s).
It was fun at the Vuelta, yes (yet note that the Vuelta never got much more real TV audience through this formula!). But when it became a more widespread pattern, whose actual meaning was really favouring a single type of training/athlete, you could see spectators drop at the very same TDF.
Luckily we’ve now got more options. Of course, every race ending up as a long solo can become equally monotonous precisely because of lack of variety, but quite surely not more boring than the other approach to racing. As I said, it’s more like the exciting part – typically *not even shorter* than it used to – being in a different place – and generally a less predictable one.
The Seixas way of attacking is indeed much more Remco than Pogi. He seems to miss some explosive capacities, and for the moment doesn’t need any tactical skills… Let’s see when he will have some decisions to make, and if he can follow very explosives attacks. Will he be stuck in the same tactical stalemate than Remco sometimes ?
moment the race was won. When “Tudor’s Rick Pluimers” fell right in front of him not only did MVDP not fall he managed to dodge around him despite the slippery surface and hardly slowed down. The only thing that would have been more remarkable would have been a cyclocross hop.
But seriously this would be a maneuver beyond most and if he had stopped the entire race would have been different.
For me, living fairly close to Belgium, the first paragraph sound a bit strange. I think many places in rural but not too remote Northwestern Europe has this color palette this time of year. It just looks like winter to me.
But I get that for cycling fans in other parts of the world this may be all they ever see from Belgium, and Germany, UK or Netherlands don’t have famous races this time of year.
Re: the race, it was fairly obvious Van der Poel was going to win when he took the front after Molenberg and towed the whole group clear 1 min from the peleton. The fall might have helped him get a gap but it was minimal at first. He just pulled and didn’t seem to mind he hardly got any help. That to me was a sign he was feeling good. And when Mathieu feels good there’s only one guy who can sometimes beat him on these cobbles.
… and not only that, everyone is always complaining that it is not bleak enough in Roubaix anymore!
Meanwhile in my part of Canada, the colour palette is white. Green grass looks so inviting, and 10 degrees sounds positively balmy! Another month at least to recover from the 13 feet of snow we received.
I nearly spat my coffee out reading the comment about the optimism of the solar panels, whilst sat in a breakfast room full of optimistic Belgies! I had that same thought yesterday though,whilst riding over to the Eikenberg. I saw a dilapidated 1970’s pre-grab garage, cloistered with thousands of euros worth of solar panels. But I love that
If I didn’t misread the graphics, MVDP rode the Muur 50s faster than the fastest in the second group (Laporte). It was around 2 min effort if I remember correctly. Anyone to confirm that?
I did not understand the graphic either.
Assuming he really rode it 50s faster, his advantage must have been grown by the same amount onto group 2 and the peloton (which was not the case afaik). It was a strange timing table.
They’ve been wrong before. The gaps for TV are often taken by GPS on the race motos and they move positions around this climb. For example here’s a screenshot from 2024 where you can see the front group (in yellow), Tim Wellens (white) and the peloton (red) in the streets of Geraardsbergen:
But the time gap says Wellens is at 25s and the peloton at 55s. Only there’s probably 10s between the first rider and the peloton with Wellens in between.
If they are using GPS then the times may as well be random when going through towns where signals will have numerous blockages and reflections, especially at relatively high latitudes like Geraadsbergen at 51°N (inclination of the GPS satellite orbits is 55°).
I’m surprised that sort of inaccuracy is still accepted over odometer-based readings.
I think now they showed the climbing time of MvdP and then how many seconds later the others made it over the top. Thus not (necessarily) a 50s slower climbing time for Laporte. That would have been outrageous.
Ended up recording it and watching it late. Saw it as far as the Molenberg, saw Van der Poel was over the top with a couple of others. Felt no need to watch any further and went to bed pretty safe that I knew who had won.
I still wonder why Vermeersch rode with van der Poel. Does he really think he could beat him in a group of three? If Vermeersch hadn’t cooperated (like RB’s van Dijk), the group would probably have come back together.
Cycling is a team sport, and UAE would have had a better chance of winning the race against vdP with at least two riders (Wellens and Vermeersch) from a large group than with just one rider out of a group of three.
Sure, vdP would probably have won anyway by pulling away on the Mur v. Geraardsbergen – ciao! But if Vermeersch hadn’t worked with him, this probability would not have been so high and the race would have been more exciting. In my humble opinion, the UAE team car once again didn’t act too smart and played a decisive role in vdP’s success.
One would think with a budget that size that uae would have more tactically aware staff in the team cars, not that I mind uae losing.
UAE are a team who allow their riders to make their own decisions on the road, rather than being very prescriptive: this can result in tactical mistakes in particular races, but it also results in more tactically aware riders in the long run. The team are clearly happy with this tradeoff.
You also have to remember that the DS only sees the TV coverage about 30 seconds behind the race, and can not always contact the riders. Particularly in the classics, this means that riders have to react to the race as it unfolds rather than waiting for instructions.
Well, given that UAE does not need the points, it is clear that they are here to win. They made their ambition clear to achieve more wins in 2026 than in the previous year. If that is the case, the odds of Vermeersch winning out of that group of three are surely the worst of the three.
I admire Vermeersch for his courage and self-belief, but I don’t think it was a smart decision to work with van der Poel, whether the decision came from him or the team car.
Getting on the podium was a good result for Vermeersch. And UAE did not have someone who could win in a sprint, or someone who could drop everyone on the Bosberg.
They don’t need points but they value topping the rankings and while we can’t see their rider contracts, some include clauses where riders are paid bonuses linked to points.
Fair Points @John @The Inner Ring
My argument is certainly influenced by the fact that I was a little disappointed by the boring finale of the race.
Vermeersch’ first podium in a spring classic… only because the Paris-Roubaix he finished 2nd in was held in the autumn!
Nice one ^___^
But then I realised that it’s still Winter, so no Spring classic podium has really bloomed yet for Florian 😛
How satisfying it is for this race to have MVdP on the winners list. It was a glaring omission. Finally someone of the stature to match up to Ian Stannard on the Omloop honours board.
I’m (half) joking. But it’s a bit true that in years to come we will look back at MVdP’s career and look for what’s missing, and it seems there will be fewer and fewer races.
We’ll all say – I was there, or I was transfixed in front of the TV, and carry that with us as we do with Boonen, Museeuw and other classics riders going back through the eras. A real treat to be witnessing these guys ‘complete’ cycling.
Agreed, I surprise myself growing old and remembering some, well, memorable moments from the distant or closer past. Not necessarily about completing some stats – yet that aspect partly adds up also to some otherwise unremarkable races.
MVDP did to Vermeersch and de Dijke on the Muur what Tadej did to MVDP and the rest last year on Oude Kwaremont, our very best riders are just incredible
It would be a great piece of history for MvdP to complete the Omloop – Ronde double. While I usually root for underdogs, I will cheer for him. Although I guess if Pogi also starts the Ronde, is MvdP the underdog?
I think no. Here’s where they meet on equal footing. MSR also. And the spectacle is all the better for it.
Agreed that i’d love see him do of the Omloop-Ronde double. What a prospect.
Wild OT but worth a read (comnments are already closed under more pertinent past posts).
https://www.cicloweb.it/news/95352688134/come-gli-uae-hanno-inondato-il-ciclismo-con-il-loro-soldi-pieni-di-sangue-dall-inizio
Italian (make good use of translation tools if needed), free access, independent media – probably the best cycling source in Italian.
Nothing new or unknown (and there’s an editing error halfway through), but it’s fine to have it all displayed together in a single place. Or to have it displayed, full stop.
Great article, thanks for recommending. Even the English translation reads beautifully:
“The UAE Tour ended on Sunday, February 22 with the final victory of Isaac Del Toro, and for a few days world cycling pedaled inside a postcard. Miles and miles in the desert, with commentators alternating comments on escapes and bonuses with admiring descriptions of the futuristic skylines, Pharaonic infrastructures, the ostentatious modernity of the United Arab Emirates. Skyscrapers like glass icebergs emerging from the sand, eight-lane highways without a soul, resorts that look like they came out of a rendering. A careful direction, which uses cycling as a scenic backdrop for a precise story: that of an open, dynamic, hospitable country, capable of offering the world the highest level of sporting events.”
Your opening paragraph was as exquisite as MVDPs move around Pluimers. Great start to the season. Thanks!