How the Predictions for 2025 Fared

As tempting as it can be to bury past predictions that soured it’s healthy to revisit the piece from January to see what the thinking was, what has happened since and try to learn from it.

Who wins the Tour de France? Pogačar won as predicted but the piece envisaged a very close contest between him and Jonas Vingegaard. A season later and this was wrong to the point of wondering how this even got written.

But the thinking was each had won the Tour after the other sustained a heavy crash and things could be close if they weren’t plagued by injuries in the build-up. Also the view in January was that it would still be a two rider contest with nobody else troubling the pair. The proved true with Florian Lipowitz a revelation but racing Oscar Onley for third place.

The hypothesis of a close contest was tantalising, see the opening stage of the Dauphiné with Pogačar, Vingegaard and Van der Poel making moves in Montluçon was a thrill, only for the world champion to eject Vingegaard on the Domancy climb before the Alpine racing really even started. The hope existed into the Tour itself with a thriller opening phase, until the race was settled in Hautacam.

Star riders will race less
If you’ve read the paragraphs above you might say “but Vingegaard did crash” as he left Paris-Nice but he didn’t race much elsewhere either in order to pick of his goals so he’s an example and the idea was why race small events when the crash risk can be too risky. Team mate Wout van Aert did go back to Dwars Door Vlaanderen when he could have sat it out to be safe; only he and his team mates got mugged by Neilson Powless.

This one is harder to quantify and might still be one for 2026, Pogačar’s race programme could look like 2025 but with fewer races still. We should see more “submarine” race schedules with riders out of sight for long periods of time. It will also help on some teams that have congestion at the top, a chance to give others leadership.

The sprinting spoils will be shared
This held up. Take the Tour de France where Jonathan Milan took the points jersey, and two stage wins but only on days when Tim Merlier wasn’t able the sprint, Jasper Philipsen won one before his early exit.

Olav Kooij looked great at times but beatable too. Are sprint stages the new suspense, the days to make bloggers writing previews do their homework? It sets things up well for 2026 with Paul Magnier and Arnaud De Lie as fastmen but not pure sprinters. Matthew Brennan is interesting because at times he looked invincible, some how there were days you could see he was going to win with 90 seconds to go.

Women’s races get a rising audience
While the Tour Femmes had been off to a great start and has cemented its position as the lead event TV audiences were shrinking. Some of this was down to the Olympics last year hogging audiences so what would happen in a year with clear run? Pauline Ferrand-Prévôt and Maeva Squiban certainly helped bring in a record domestic audience. The international audience is hard to quantify as a block but there were increases in Belgium and the Netherlands and comments from sponsor Zwift suggest it improved beyond too.

Arguably a big change for the long term was made with the women’s Giro moving on on the calendar, it won’t be held in July any more and so it won’t be eclipsed by the Tour de France. We should see more women’s races with established brands eclipsing men’s races that don’t have status.

XDS-Astana get relegated
Wrong and then some. The idea was that a bunch of mercenaries recruited to grab points would not get along, they would be out for themselves at the expense of the team. This sounds more like Cofidis instead.

The Kazakh team copied from Arkéa and Lotto before to chase points in smaller races and place riders in the top-10 rather than go all in to deliver a win, “if you can’t beat them, then score”. But XDS-Astana didn’t just score subtly, they had a great season: finishing fourth on the UCI rankings and ahead of Soudal-Quickstep and Red Bull; and fifth when ranked by wins too. Christian Scaroni was a revelation with 2,399 points and there was depth as their 20th rider Anton Kuzmin scored 208 points while Cofidis’s Sergio Samitier had 68 (the relegation rankings counts the 20 best riders on each team).

Arkéa-B&B Hotels get relegated too
Yes and as the piece said the real worry was the team was set to fold. As we could see last winter the team had lost some good riders because of budget issues, it was in trouble already and this made it hard to appeal to sponsors.

Kévin Vaquelin had a great Tour de France but already he’d signed with Ineos in April so any incoming sponsor if there was anyone interested would struggle to get him back. Still Vauquelin-mania gave the team a good ending. He’s a promising rider to watch with a big talent that’s often been sapped by self-doubt. The team might be missed but for now the place gets easily filled by teams on the up.

Tour wildcards are make-or-break
Back in January three teams in Tudor, Total Energies and Uno-X were jostling for two places at the Tour de France. Tudor looked compulsory in January already but if Total or Uno-X were left out this could be existential for them because if they could not get in this year it didn’t look any easier next year and so their sponsorship could be doomed. The solution mentioned was to invite all three by waiving the rules and this duly happened.

The rule change has become the norm with five teams from outside the World Tour. Tudor, Q36.5 and Cofidis qualify* to race the Tour next year. Which leaves two wildcards. Paradoxically the situation looks very different. Total look obvious for an invite but the remaining place? Tietma Rockets probably but almost because there’s nobody else given some Italian teams crave the Giro, likewise Spanish teams the Vuelta. Look to 2027 and what happens if Total doesn’t find a replacement sponsor, then who is invited? There’s a chance to get a foot in the door for a team able to assemble the right project.

Safety remains a contentious topic, divisive even
There were times in the season when you could see some team managers quick to criticise race organisers but silent at other times because they have a beef with the organisers or even had a personal connection to the event.

The nadir was surely the fiasco at the women’s Tour of Romandie where some teams and the UCI could not agree about the trial of safety transponders and so there was a stand-off with teams refusing to fit the UCI’s devices and the UCI applying the rule that disqualifies riders that don’t fit an issued transponder. And behind this a squabble between some teams belonging to the Velon group and the UCI and rather than sitting down to find a solution for safety politics won.

Yellow cards will prove controversial
This looked like it could erupt during the season but it was good to be wrong, 273 were given out in the year and only Oscar Riesebeek was disqualified. We never saw a big name rider on a yellow card get issued a second during a major race and sent home. That doesn’t mean it won’t happen next season.

The biggest fuss was probably over Bryan Coquard in the wake of Jasper Philipsen’s crash out of the Tour de France. Did Coquard deserve a yellow card? Probably not, even pro-Philipsen Belgian TV pundits seemed to agree after they’d cooled down – but in getting one this crystallised his apparent fault and he got roasted on social media and it got to him.

Calendar reform is finally unveiled
No sign of this. But while everyone likes the idea of reforming a jumbled calendar with confusing labels, the outcomes might not be what people want once you have to start scrapping races with local roots and it’s not easy to magic a new race around a desert(ed) motorsport circuit into existence either.

Adjacent to this was the One Cycling cycling whose launch could have prompted the change. The scheme kept pushing back a mooted launch date only to all but vanish from conversations even if it is still a work in progress.

David Lappartient remains at the UCI
True and the prediction was he’d have a hard time trying to become the IOC chief. While he’s a politician, he’s not an operator on the level required to glide into the top job at the Olympics, especially as he started as an outsider without the implicit backing of the exiting chief. It’s back to cycling and he’s left the French Olympic committee too. So more cycling? Possibly and calendar reform could be back on the agenda – there’s a dossier on his desk about budget caps and other structural issues – but a recent tweet in praise of ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy on the eve of his incarceration for campaign fraud hints at eye still on French politics too, or possibly that’s reading too much into it?

Gigantic waterbottles
Meh, not really. With some riders using these in training so that they can carry enough energy drink for today’s high carb racing – you have to train like this as well as race – then they could race with bigger bidons. Only weight is still a live issue and so riders have relied on musettes from soigneurs and team mates to fetch supplies so they don’t have to carry an extra 500 grams.

Rider retirements
The prediction was some riders can make so much money from the sport these days that they just don’t need to go on racing, the risks to their health become too much or they become fed up of life on the road away from family, mid-range hotels and weighing their food. This was wrong for 2025 although some riders stopping this year have surprisingly big real estate investments which probably eased the decision to turn down a renewal.

As for the superstars it’s probably something that’s coming. Plenty of millionaires can live expensive lifestyles so many will want to keep on earning for as long as they can but structurally the sport can set up riders – mainly men for now – for life these days. This was still a topic in the year as the loudest voice for early retirement was surely Tadej Pogačar who is increasingly invoking the end of his current contract as a date to leave the sport.