Classics and time trial specialist Stefan Küng heads into the Opening Weekend this Saturday for his ninth participation in Omloop Het Nieuwsblad - meaning the 31-year-old has had more than enough visits to the race startline in Gent to know that it's never too wise to make too many predictions about what can happen.
It's not just that Omloop Het Nieuwsblad will likely be the Groupama-FDJ racer's only Classic before Paris-Nice. More to the point, every year when Omloop comes around, experienced racers like Küng are all too aware of how dramatically Omloop raises the bar in terms of condition and form demands compared to what's come before in the season.
While Küng's best result in Omloop is a comparatively low-key ninth in 2020, he's got plenty more success in similar events to boost his morale before Saturday. Just to name the races he's doing this spring, he's taken podium places in both E3 and Dwars door Vlaanderen, in the Tour of Flanders he has a fifth and a sixth place, and in Paris-Roubaix, he has been top five or better every year since 2022, when he claimed third.
First though, is Omloop, but Küng is preaching caution, for now, regarding his chances, because as he told Cyclingnews during the Volta ao Algarve, his only previous race to Omloop, "It's the first race of the season, you always work hard over the winter and you never know exactly how you are doing.
"You have an idea, but it's always good to be back in racing and to be focused on this good start to the season. Because once this [Algarve] is done, the serious business starts."
Küng placed a lowkey 30th in the final time trial in Algarve, a stage the Swiss star might have found disappointing, given he currently has 22 time trials in his palmares, two of them in the Portuguese race. But Küng had already said that the new Algarve TT format of an uphill finish did him no favours, and as he told Eurosport afterwards after grinding his way to the summit of the Alto do Malhão, "It was not the most pleasant one".
"I wanted to finish the Volta ao Algarve with a good feeling on the bike, but sometimes it's better when it's not 100% yet, to give the body time to recover and be ready for the Opening weekend and what comes after.
"Now I'm not flying yet, so I'm not very, very happy, but it's the first race of the season, we changed our approach a bit, so we have to trust the process because the work we did over the winter was good. I have no doubt I'll be ready for the Spring Classics."
Küng pointed out that his different approach means he is not quite firing on all cylinders like he has been at this point in the year, but "for sure the big goals are in April".
"I just need to stay calm, recover, do Omloop and Paris-Nice and the legs will only improve. As an athlete, you like to have nice feelings in the first race of the season, but it is still only the first race. So I think my experience helps me to stay calmer than I would have been five years ago," he concluded.
The debate over whether it's possible to get a better idea of form for the upcoming challenges in Belgium from races like the Algarve is a perennial one. But Küng comes firmly down on the side of those who think you can come away with a lot of useful information for the spring from five days of racing in Portugal.
"I would say you can learn a lot because there are the results, there's how you are feeling and there's how you react to efforts in the race," he told Cyclingnews. "It gives you an indication of how you stand.
"Also, it's good to have race kilometres in the legs before the start of the Classics for sure. That's always going to help."
While the goal in Omloop is always to score the best possible result, Küng is unwilling to put a number on the kind of result he'd like to have before the race. It's not just his own usual uncertainty he has to handle, as he explained, but also that "with a new year, there's always a new kind of dynamics in the Classics".
"We've also got some new guys in the team, too, there's been a bit of a turnover, so we'll know more after it.
"I know this race suits me but it's the first of the season so it's hard to predict anything in particular. Until you race that first Classic, you never really know how you are."
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