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.
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.