Six conclusions from Opening Weekend 2025 – fascinating big team weaknesses, a new women's balance of power and Alpecin-Deceuninck's great start

The 2025 Spring Classics season is officially underway after the men’s and women’s pelotons blasted across the cobblestones of Flanders over the weekend.

After weeks of warm weather racing to start the new season in Australia, the Middle East, and Iberia, cycling’s top Classics stars headed to Belgium to take on the men’s Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne, the women’s Omloop Het Niewsblad, and the Omloop van het Hageland.

The biggest prizes of the Spring Classics season – such as the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix may still lie over a month away, but we can now declare the Belgian racing season underway.

The first cobbled races of 2025 brought up plenty of talking points, from the form of Classics superteam Visma-Lease a Bike in the men’s races to the new landscape of power among the women’s peloton.

There was plenty to talk about during the grand opening of the cobbled season, and the coming weeks – as we ramp up towards the two big Monuments – will throw up countless questions and topics of discussion.

Before all that comes up, however, are our five big conclusions from the 2025 Opening Weekend.

Visma-Lease a Bike were lacking in their 'A' game - and other teams benefited

The Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne pressroom was located inside the local church this year, with computer tables, television screens and trays of sandwiches replacing pews and prayer books for at least one afternoon. 

When Jasper Philipsen delivered a couple of home truths in his press conference late on Sunday evening, it wasn't quite a case of preaching to the choir, but the assembled congregation of listening journalists were hardly surprised by what he had to say. 

"It's also clear that UAE and Visma were not as aggressive as we've seen in the last year. Of course, they were there, but not better than the others," Philipsen pointed out, the evidence was very much already plain to see. 

Indeed, after three years of runaway success in Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, crowned by victories for Marianne Vos and Jan Tratnik last year and a triumph the next day in Kuurne for Wout van Aert, Visma visibly struggled at this year's Opening Weekend 2025, 

Not even the runner-up spot for Olav Kooij on Sunday compensated for that. Although without it, the media criticism would surely have been all the fiercer come Monday morning. 

It was impossible to avoid the contrast with the previous weekend's stunning triumph in the Volta ao Algarve for Jonas Vingegaard, not to mention taking their netting top two spots in the final time trial of the Portuguese stage race. The whys and wherefores will surely be amply discussed and dissected in the weeks to come. 

Matteo Jorgenson, arguably their strongest rider of the weekend, pointed out that two key components of their usual Classics line-up, Christophe Laporte and 2023 winner Dylan van Baarle were missing from the 2025 line up because of illness and injury, and he might have added (but didn't)  that last year's winner, Jan Tratnik, was no longer in their line-up either. 

Team director Grischa Niermann also reminded everyone that retired rider Nathan van Hooydonck, previously so often crucial for positioning Wout van Aert in exactly the right spot for a Classics attack, was no longer present in their lineup, either.

The biggest question mark likely resides over Van Aert himself. He had an uncertain start in the Clasica Jaén and also faltered in the sprints at the Volta ao Algarve, pushing the Belgian way back up the rankings of favourites for Omloop. The moment when he could have blasted away the winter cobwebs and left the field for dead in Omloop never materialized.

To his credit, Van Aert is never one to avoid self-criticism, and he said himself that he was never really in the running on Saturday. 

Then on Sunday, while much more active, he again came up against the stranglehold of sprinters teams. Helped enormously by the excellent weather conditions, they were determined to suffocate any challenges. 

"It was not as much of a demonstration as the past two years," Niermann admitted to Nieuwsblad. "Just fine, but of course not at the level he needs to reach in a month.” 

There is still plenty of time for Van Aert to move up to absolute top shape and he'll be looking to do that in the biggest cobbled Classics after a long block at altitude.  

As Jorgenson put it,  Visma-Lease a Bike 'just hasn't clicked yet'. The most encouraging sign from Opening Weekend is the American rider, who seems both on form for both Paris-Nice in the short-term, and his cobbled Classic campaign.

After the weekend's racing, in the Kuurne church, the number of unquestioning believers in Visma-Lease a Bike sure fell away, whilst the agnostics and wait-and-seers, it was just the opposite.

Lotte Claes, Femke Gerritse surprise wins across Opening Weekend

Lotte Claes (Arkéa-B&B Hotels Women) and Femke Gerritse (SD Worx-Protime) were the surprise winners across Opening Weekend's Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and Omloop van het Hageland, showing just how unpredictable racing can be, especially during the Classics.

Claes outsprinted Aurela Nerlo (Winspace Orange Seal) in the streets of Ninove after being in the day-long breakaway to secure the first and biggest win of her career on the Women's WorldTour.

Arkéa-B&B Hotels Women may not have started the event with one of the outright favourites, but Claes joined an early move that included Nerlo, Julie Stockman (DD Group), Elena Pirrone (Roland) and Mieke Docx, and while Stockman was distanced, the other four ended up gaining 13 minutes on the peloton. Over the Muur van Geraardsbergen, Claes and Nerlo still held over four minutes on a chasing duo; Demi Vollering (FDJ-Suez) and Puck Pieterse (Fenix-Deceuninck).

But it was a case of too little too late for the bigger teams, and Claes believed in her strength and ability to succeed at the finish line, where she earned a well-deserved victory while Nerlo finished second place. Over three minutes behind, Vollering beat Pieterse in the sprint for third.

The following day, Gerritse secured the victory at Omloop van Het Hageland, a 1.1 race that is widely recognised as being part of Opening Weekend. 

The 23-year-old all-rounder did not compete at the previous day's Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, but she joined a powerful team that included former world champion Anna van der Breggen, who just returned to competition after a three-year retirement.

She outsprinted her breakaway companions to win in Tielt-Winge and also claimed the first professional victory of her career. Although many would have anticipated that Van der Breggen would take the win since she too was in the breakaway, she did the lion's share of the teamwork in the move and then led out Gerritse perfectly to secure the win.

Van der Breggen started her season at Setmana Valenciana where she finished third overall, but said that her form is still not where she wants to be. She will be looking ahead to peak form at the Ardennes Classics in April.

UAE Team Emirates-XRG are waiting for Tadej Pogačar for the cobbled Classics

When Tom Pidcock was asked on Friday who he thought might be a top contender for Opening Weekend, other than himself, he barely missed a beat before answering 'Jonnie Narváez'.

The line-up for both races for UAE Team Emirates-XRG was certainly a daunting one, with riders of the calibre of Tim Wellens, Narváez, Figueiras Champions Classic winner Antonio Morgado and former Paris-Roubaix podium finishers Florian Vermeersch and Nils Politt all present. 

Wellens himself made the biggest effort of any of the favourites to try to break the sprinters' stranglehold on Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne, with a stunning, if ultimately futile, 60-kilometre drive for the line. 

UAE were the first to raise the pace on Saturday some 90 kilometres from the line, and despite Narváez' impressive early show of power on Sunday in the hills of Kuurne, overall UAE's one major cameo came down to Wellens' refusal to bow to the inevitable. They certainly didn't reshape the narrative of either race, with Antonio Morgado's stunning early season form seen in Portugal most definitely not on show in Belgium.

Morgado's main challenges in the Classics are arguably much later in the spring, and the same goes for a Paris-Roubaix contender like Politt. But nobody could blame the UAE team management if they're drumming their fingers increasingly nervously as they wait for Tadej Pogačar's flight to arrive at Brussels airport this spring. 

The change of dates for UAE Tour and Opening Weekend benefited both races

For the first time since Omloop, the UAE Tour and its predecessor, the Abu Dhabi Tour, were all added to the WorldTour race calendar in 2017, they did not overlap. Rather than UAE finishing on the same weekend as Omloop and Kuurne, the Middle Eastern stage race finished a week earlier. The change was small but the benefits were immediate and notable. 

It reduced an already ridiculously overloaded weekend of racing and allowed a bigger media spotlight to shine on the first WorldTour Classic in Europe of the year. Equally, it meant that the UAE Tour was the only WorldTour event the previous weekend, and given the world's number one racer, Tadej Pogačar was racing - and winning - that event also gained in prominence. 

Most importantly of all, Omloop and Kuurne gained in terms of participation, particularly in terms of the sprinters: Kuurne winner and Nieuwsblad podium finisher Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck), Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek), Kuurne runner-up Olav Kooij (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Tim Merlier (Soudal-QuickStep) were all present at one or both startlines in Belgium, having raced in at the UAE Tour.  

Putting together a WorldTour calendar that avoids major race overlap in the future, as has been widely rumoured will be the case in the 2026 reordering of the WorldTour, is not an easy task. But on the evidence of this weekend in Belgium, it's certainly worth trying.

New division of power in women's peloton reflected in the refusal to take responsibility on the road

Het Laatste Nieuws explained the surprise outcome of the women's Omloop Nieuwsblad with lots of sarcasm: 'Bickering and poker between Dutch riders and a winner called Lotte - how the Omloop was a carbon-copy of the World Championships' 

The Flemish newspaper was referring to how the biggest teams in the women's peloton threw away their chances in a welter of disagreements on who would work to pull back the early break. 

Ellen van Dijk of Lidl-Trek told Cyclingnews how Saturday's scenario reminded her of the disagreements in the Tokyo Olympics, won by Austria's Anna Kiesenhofer, as the teams passed the buck and so lost the race.

Full marks were due to Lotte Claes (Arkéa-B&B Hotels) for her stunning victory and day-long break and for Aurela Nerlo (Winspace Orange Seal) who went with her and then tried to beat her with a kilometre-long sprint. 

The bizarre lack of collaboration behind, giving the early move a 14-minute advantage at one point, was perhaps the biggest single factor in a success Claes herself said afterwards she could never have expected in her wildest Omloop dreams.

Rather than point specific fingers at specific teams, riders or leaders, it was clear that the new hierarchy in women's cycling was so finely balanced that it failed to produce the exciting racing everybody had predicted would happen.

Everyone was left wondering why the top teams failed to take the initiative, and rather than trying to claim one of the biggest prizes in the cycling calendar, opted to play a disastrous waiting game instead.

Alpecin-Deceuninck already on form and that's even before Mathieu van der Poel starts to race

It remains to be seen how Mathieu van der Poel performs in his surprise early season debut at Le Samyn this Tuesday, but there is doubt if his co-leaders and teammates are already firing on all cylinders, with the Opening Weekend providing a resounding answer to any doubts.

Jasper Philipsen did not win Saturday's Omloop Nieuwsblad after starting his sprint too early, but the hilly race is as much about studying a team's collective form as it is about individuals and as they marshalled the peloton to ensure a bunch sprint and then rode the final kilometre faultlessly. Indeed, Alpecin-Deceuninck were very much in evidence and control in a way that Visma-Lease a Bike and UAE could only manage much more sporadically.

Appropriately enough given their title sponsor, Sunday's Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne was very much a case of 'rinse and repeat', only this time with a much more well-deserved conclusion. The pressure is most definitely off Alpecin-Deceuninck, particularly as they are still waiting for their Classics leader.