8 conclusions from Opening Weekend 2023

Following a six-week introduction to the 2023 season held in the sunshine of Australia, the Middle East, South America, and southern Europe, the grit and grime of the Belgian racing season began with a bang at Opening Weekend.

The men's and women's pelotons hit the cobbles and hills of Flanders hard at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne, plus the women's Omloop and Omloop van het Hageland, heralding the start of spring Classics season and laying down markers ahead of the coming weeks of racing in Belgium and northern France.

As ever, there's plenty to talk about after four action-filled races packed into two days. We saw the domination of SD Worx and Jumbo-Visma, the disappointment of Soudal-QuickStep, the rise of Arnaud De Lie, and as many tech innovations as ever.

While the results – both good and bad – always come with the caveat of the biggest races lying in the weeks ahead, the races of Opening Weekend are nevertheless major meets in their own right and kick off the narratives that will develop through to the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix.

Here, Daniel Ostanek, our man on the cold wind-swept ground in Belgium gives us his main takeaways from the weekend's racing.

Jumbo-Visma: the new QuickStep?

Last year, we wrote that the Dutch squad had arrived as a leading Classics force after Wout van Aert's solo Omloop Het Nieuwsblad win while his teammates were strong and on the front foot across both days.

If they had already arrived as a force, then what happened this time around amounted to a show of total domination. Two races, two wins, and then a second and third place to go with it.

Few expected Jumbo-Visma to turn up and control Omloop Het Nieuwsblad as they did, first attacking with 105km left to run and later forcing what turned out to be the winning split on the Molenberg.

Race winner Dylan van Baarle plus Christophe Laporte, Tiesj Benoot, Jan Tratnik, and Nathan Van Hooydonck were the key men in yellow on Saturday and at Kuurne it was the same again, even if the podium duo were different.

Again, the attacking started early at 84km from the line, and again multiple Jumbo men made the winning split, with Benoot and Van Hooydonck putting on a racing masterclass in the final 5km to come out on top from the leading group of five.

It's true that Opening Weekend is a long way from the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix, both timing-wise and in terms of profile. But Jumbo-Visma did all this without their Classics team leader Wout van Aert having shown up yet.

QuickStep are usually looked upon as the Opening Weekend benchmark setters, the Belgian squad racing through Classics season after Classics season with several leaders packed into their squad. But while they floundered, Jumbo took the mantle, with multiple riders emerging as potential race winners even in the absence of their star.

Even QuickStep boss Patrick Lefevere had to admit, "We have to conclude that they are now the team we were a few years ago."

SD Worx: The same old SD Worx

The Dutch squad showed up at Opening Weekend with, on paper, the strongest squad in the peloton with the world's top sprinter Lorena Wiebes lining up alongside Dutch and Belgian superstars Demi Vollering and Lotte Kopecky.

An all-star start list on paper isn't a guarantee of success at the finish line, though, but few would've doubted that SD Worx would walk away with at least one win across Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and Omloop van het Hageland.

In the end, they came away from the first Belgian races of the year with two more wins in the bag, courtesy of Kopecky and Wiebes, and in the end, it wasn't a surprise from the team ranked as best in the world last season.

On Saturday, Kopecky put in a dominant performance in the final, bridging across to solo attacker Arlenis Sierra on the Muur van Geraardsbergen before leaving the Movistar rider behind on the Bosberg and then soloing home as Wiebes made it a one-two 11 seconds later.

The next day it came down to a bunch sprint, with SD Worx on the front and fending off attacks late on. Wiebes, who racked up an absurd 23 wins last year, was the obvious candidate for the win and duly sped to her second for her new team.

"One and two in Omloop Het Nieuwsblad was already very special," she said later. "Also, in Omloop van het Hageland we shot the main bullet. As a team, we can be happy with this. We can build on this."

Two big Opening Weekend victories look to be just the start for SD Worx in 2023.

Tech innovation only goes so far

Once upon a time, the cobbled Classics brought with them a sea of tech hacks and innovations.

In the modern era of bikes stronger, lighter and more aero than before, as well as carbon wheels that can take on all terrains comfortably, there's less of interest to pick out in comparison to races 20 years ago, though new ideas still emerge.

That remained the case at Opening Weekend, too. Peter Sagan raced with a Shimano GRX gravel derailleur to aid him on the rough cobbled terrain, while Taco van der Hoorn was aero-first with some specially-developed Nalini legwarmers, and of course, Victor Campenaerts showed up with a 62-tooth 1x chainring, a two-speed rear hub from Classified, and 32mm tyres.

In theory, details like these all add up and save some watts, but in the races themselves, the legs, the tactics, and the luck all play their part.

Campenaerts would cross the line in 62nd at Omloop, while Sagan's best placing was 33rd at Kuurne. Van der Hoorn did almost score a podium from the breakaway on Sunday, grabbing fourth from the lead group.

How much of the Dutchman's career-best placing was down to his legwarmer choice will remain a mystery, though it likely has more to do with what was underneath them.

In the end, Jumbo-Visma dominated both men's races aboard Cervelo's aero S5 bikes, kitted out with fairly standard Classics componentry – Van Baarle's Omloop win saw him use 28mm tyres and a 52-tooth chainring – and few experimental innovations in sight. 

Soudal-QuickStep a far cry from their usual selves

"I didn't come back from Rwanda for this," was team boss Patrick Lefevere's assessment of a weekend which saw his team race to a disappointing total of sixth and ninth places across the two races.

Soudal-QuickStep were not only out-fought and out-thought by Jumbo-Visma, but the Belgian powerhouses didn't even go toe-to-toe with their rivals in the first place, instead racing on the back foot and away from the front.

The team had no riders in the winning moves at Omloop or Kuurne and appeared not to have the collective strength to impact the races as they have so often in the past, racking up four and nine wins at each since their formation in 2003.

Last year, they had endured a disappointing opener at Omloop before sprinter Fabio Jakobsen turned up and Lefevere gave the squad a talking-to, resulting in the Dutch sprinter salvaging the weekend with a win in Kuurne.

That would've been the idea once again on Sunday, but once again it was Jumbo who took over and then Belgian rivals Lotto-Dstny who commanded the chase behind.

There were mitigating circumstances such as several crashes and Kasper Asgreen's illness, which took him out of both races, but, as Lefevere said, the team just didn't race as they usually do.

"I have the impression that we want to race defensively, that we don't want to take the bull by the horns. We're not used to that," he said after Kuurne.

Still, though, it's not all doom and gloom. At the UAE Tour, Remco Evenepoel recorded their 12th win of the season, Meanwhile, the meat of cobbled Classics season, which will see Julian Alaphilippe link up with the riders here, is far away enough that there's plenty of time to get things right and add more Classics wins to the team's lengthy palmarès. 

Arnaud De Lie's relentless rise

Belgian sprinter Arnaud De Lie burst onto the scene last year, his first in the pro peloton, as he racked up nine victories amid Lotto-Dstny's WorldTour relegation battle.

His first two, at the Challenge Mallorca and GP Monseré, came even before his 20th birthday in March, and this year, he already has three wins before his 21st. A fourth win of the season wasn't to be this weekend, but the youngster still demonstrated his rapid progression.

At Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne a year ago he was, in the words of his directeur sportif Nikolas Maes, "dropping somewhere in the open fields completely out of the peloton", while on Sunday he was seventh, second-best of the rest behind the winning break.

Omloop Het Nieuwsblad had seen him deliver on pre-race tips of contention, grabbing second place from the bunch sprint behind solo winner Van Baarle.

It was all the more impressive given a crash 50km out, a subsequent rush back to the front, and then a move – in the big ring – up the Muur to form an elite chase group behind the winner, before sprinting to second just as the peloton made the catch in the dying metres.

Despite the talent, results, and hype, Lotto will continue with a careful and selective programme for their newest star, who completed only his sixth WorldTour race day at Omloop.

"Let's say that when we took De Lie in the team last year, we knew he was capable of doing things, but if we knew his growing curve would be this steep, then no, we didn't expect this," Maes told Cyclingnews after Kuurne, noting that a Paris-Roubaix debut is coming up in April.

De Lie was already the hottest new sprint talent in the peloton coming into 2023 – now we can look forward to him shining on the cobbles, too.

The evergreen Marta Bastianelli

Italian veteran Marta Bastianelli enjoying her Opening Weekend is hardly a new revelation. The UAE Team ADQ leader has, after all, won Omloop van het Hageland three times before and has two Omloop Het Nieuwsblad podiums to her name.

This time around she added a third and took a second place at Sunday's race, the 35-year-old showing no signs of slowing down as she kicks off her final season in the pro peloton.

Bastianelli's result at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad came with her squad looking among the strongest of the day, with five women in the lead group before Kopecky stole away, heading up the chase afterwards.

She ended up second-best behind Lorena Wiebes from the group of 27 behind the Belgian winner, a good result given an illness in the lead-up to the race.

"After the climb and the last cobbled section, we managed to hang on to the main group," Bastianelli said of the race. "Personally, I don't know how I did it – my legs were fine, but I was struggling to breathe because I've been a bit sick for a couple of days.

"Then, in the sprint, we knew it was going to be tough against Wiebes, but the girls did a good job, and I spent the last of my energy to make the sprint and get a podium finish."

Another podium followed on Sunday, at the race she won a year ago, with Wiebes again beating her in the sprint. Crashes and bad luck for her teammates meant it was just Bastianelli in the lead group this time, meaning wheel-surfing was in order for the final sprint.

At her final Opening Weekend, Bastianelli might not have walked away with a victory, but she can still hold her head high as the best of the rest away from the SD Worx machine. Bigger goals lie ahead, with her last spring season bringing a chance to add to previous major Classics wins at the Tour of Flanders, Gent-Wevelgem, and Brabantse Piji.

Ineos Grenadiers quieter than 2022

The Ineos Grenadiers youth movement burst onto the Classics scene last season, kicking off the campaign with a young squad and active and ambitious racing at Opening Weekend on the way to big wins at Amstel Gold Race, Brabantse Pijl, and Paris-Roubaix.

Neo-pros Ben Turner and Magnus Sheffield raced alongside Tom Pidcock, Ethan Hayter, and Jhonatan Narváez, with 19-year-old Sheffield going on to score a memorable late solo win at Brabantse Pijl in mid-April.

This year's Opening Weekend saw a more subdued Ineos performance. Turner crashed out early at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, fracturing his elbow in the process, while Hayter was out injured and Narváez wasn't racing, leaving Pidcock and Sheffield to lead the charge alongside Michał Kwiatkowski.

Pidcock, who is set to lead the British squad through the spring campaign, came away with a fifth place from the chase group behind Omloop winner and former teammate Van Baarle, but few eyes were on him or his team on Saturday. At Kuurne, a reduced five-man squad without Pidcock had a quiet day out, with Sheffield's 24th place the top Ineos result.

All in all, it was a far cry from the 2022 Opening Weekend, which heralded the start of the aggressive racing that would bring those big wins later in the spring. It was a weekend dominated by Jumbo-Visma, something which affected Ineos' ability to make moves, at least at Omloop.

"I think it was really difficult to actually make a difference in the end," Pidcock said after the race. "I mean, okay, I think I could have attacked, but for sure, a Jumbo guy would have followed me. And then what am I going to do, let him sit on me?"

Teammate Connor Swift told Cyclingnews, meanwhile, that he, Pidcock and the team were "a little outnumbered" by the Dutch squad's strength in depth.

Fifth place, then, wasn't a bad result in the face of Jumbo-Visma, but Ineos Grenadiers certainly didn't have the weekend they would've aspired to. 

Van Vleuten's best-laid plans come undone

Movistar can walk away from Omloop Het Nieuwsblad having done very little wrong during the course of the three-and-a-half hours of action, though they would end up with only Emma Norsgaard's fourth place to show for their efforts.

It's nothing to sniff at, of course, but it could have been much more. The Dane lined up at the start alongside new arrivals Liane Lippert and Floortje Mackaij as well as Aude Biannic and Arlenis Sierra and the world champion Annemiek van Vleuten – a powerful squad that didn't surprise in how they took on the race.

The Spanish squad were on the front foot when a split on the Haaghoek cobbles saw all but Sierra make the front group of 17, with Biannic moving clear in an attack, and, when it all came back together, Sierra jumping away.

The Cuban's move looked a promising one before Lotte Kopecky intervened on the Muur before riding away on the Bosberg – surely the stage for Van Vleuten to do her thing.

Only the Dutchwoman had fallen victim to a puncture just before the Muur, perhaps the most inopportune time in the entire race. It had all gone perfectly for Movistar until it didn't.

"I had a flat tyre two kilometres before the Muur, so that was the worst possible moment. I hit a pothole, and I had to change bikes, that was the quickest option, but still not quick enough," Van Vleuten reflected later.

"That's the shit thing. I wanted to test my legs on the Muur, and I couldn’t. Only in the chase, that’s different from in the front."