Key Takeaways: Omloop Het Nieuwsblad & Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne
Breaking down the major highlights & key takeaways from the Springs Classic opening weekend
After a long winter without cobblestone-laden racing, the Spring Classics roared back into season over the rolling green fields of Belgium, with Visma-Lease a Bike tearing the field to shreds on Saturday to deliver Jan Tratnik an unexpected victory at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, before the Dutch superteam came back on Sunday at Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne to execute an even more vicious game plan that formed an elite breakaway nearly 90-kilometers from the finish line, which was defeated with relative ease by Wout van Aert in a three-up sprint finish.
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See the key highlights and condensed key takeaways from the busy weekend below:
Omloop Het Nieuwsblad
122km-to-go: The race breaks up in the crosswinds (not televised); Visma gets five riders (Van Aert, Laporte, Benoot, Jorgenson, Affini) into a 23-rider group.
54km: Heading into the climb of the Wolvenberg, Visma has Matteo Jorgenson set an incredibly high pace to soften the group, before having Wout van Aert power over the top to split the bunch.
48km: After Van Aert keeps the pace high on the rolling terrain over the top, Visma has whittled the group down to just six riders, with three of them being teammate-less (Arnaud de Lie, Tom Pidcock, Toms Skujiņš) and three being on Visma (Van Aert, Laporte, Jorgenson). This gives them a massive numerical advantage and nearly an endless array of options to attack the others.
30km: However, things get slightly more complicated for Visma when Skujiņš attacks on a paved climb and shows himself to be strong enough to distance the group, with even Van Aert struggling to close him down. Even though he gets up the climb alone, Skujiņš waits at the top, presumably since he knows he needs Van Aert with him to stay clear of a group with three Visma riders. However, this allows the six-rider group to re-form and has nothing but show Visma they can’t take Skujiņš to the base of the Kapelmuur and will have to start rotating attacks on the group with their three riders.
21km: One of these attacks finally gets Jorgenson clear of the group. Pidcock, Skujiņš, and De Lie have no option but to abstain from closing down the move and continue pacing while Van Aert and Laporte sit on since, if they chase Jorgenson, Van Aert and/or Laporte will counter-attack as soon as Jorgenson is caught. With the in-race tracker saying the group has a minute lead on the peloton, it is safe to assume this is the winning move.
16km: However, at the base of the Muur, where the G2 chase group has done a good job of keeping Jorgenson at a somewhat manageable 25 seconds, but a helicopter shot shows the 30-second gap the on-screen graphics say they have on the peloton to be wildly incorrect, and that they are within just a few seconds at the base of the race’s hardest climb.
16km: On the Muur, Van Aert and Laporte barely hang onto the back wheel of a surging De Lie (riding in the big ring), while Tim Wellens, who is just ahead of the peloton, closes down on them.
9.2km: After Jorgenson is reeled on the final climb, Bosberg, Jan Tratnik, who has been sitting in the wheels in the peloton all day, smartly attacks just when the reduced and re-formed peloton catches the front group. In the chaos, only Nils Politt has the presence of mind to realize the winning move is riding up the road and the strength to respond.
4.5km-1km: Politt’s bridge to Tratnik is key since the German’s massive frame and raw power give the diminutive Slovenian a clean draft to hide in as the two riders hold off the Lotto/Uno-X-led chase.
Finish: Politt, knowing his chances of winning a sprint are almost nonexistent and that second place is as good as his UAE team can do at this race, pulls Tratnik through the final kilometer until the Slovenian opens up his sprint to easily come around for the win. Wout van Aert leads the chase group over the finish line eight seconds back for third place.
Omloop Top Five
1) Jan Tratnik (Visma) +0
2) Nils Politt (UAE) +3
3) Wout van Aert (Visma) +8
4) Oliver Naesen (Decathlon AG2R) +8
5) Christophe Laporte (Visma) +8
Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne
92.7km: A day later, Visma is back at their same ‘attack early to pull out a select group before whittling it down shortly after’ routine with Dylan van Baarle setting an extremely hard pace on one of the day’s toughest climbs.
87.8km: After Van Baarle’s high pace pulls out a select group, Van Aert attacks on the following cobbled climb, with only Laurence Pithie and Oier Lazkano able to hold his wheel.
87.5km: At the top of the climb, Van Aert, Lazkano, and Pithie are joined by Tim Wellens, who is the only rider capable of bridging the small gap. Van Aert’s power, relative freshness, and ability to almost accelerate over the top of the climb when everyone else is on the limit mean he can close the door on the chase group despite the minimal initial gap.
87.4km: In addition to Van Aert’s pace and the group’s gap, the fact that the two riders on the front of what is left of the peloton are Visma teammates means there is almost no chance the leaders will be caught and that the race is all-but over, even this far from the finish line.
69.1km: With the only thing standing between Van Aert and a Kuurne victory being Pithie’s sprint, Van Aert duly drops the young Kiwi on the following climb before riding clear with Wellens and Lazkano, who, due to having an ability to hold high and steady power for extended periods of time but an inability to sprint, means they are the perfect long-range breakaway companions.
Finish: With such three strong leaders working well together for nearly 90 straight minutes, the peloton doesn’t stand a chance to reel them in. With their Movistar and UAE teams lacking sprinters, Wellens and Lazkano know that a top-three finish at this race is a much better outcome than refusing to work and being caught by the peloton and, after some failed light attacking and jockeying inside the final kilometer, are soundly beaten by Van Aert, who gets his second win of the young 2024 season.
KBK Top Five:
1) Wout van Aert (Visma) +0
2) Tim Wellens (UAE) +0
3) Oier Lazkano (Movistar) +0
4) Christophe Laporte (Visma) +1’23
5) Nils Eekhoff (DSM) +1’23
Five Key Takeaways
1) Visma’s potent cocktail of overwhelming strength and flawless tactics: If anyone thought the Visma opening weekend dominance of 2023, where they won both Omloop and Kuurne (and took four of the six podium spots) before going on to sweep the overall at every Grand Tour, was an aberration, this past weekend showed that to be misguided and that we are still in an era Visma dominance.
In fact, instead of their rivals learning from their dominance in 2023 and attempting to foil them, Visma countered this before it could happen by simply running an even more potent version of the same playbook.
This tactic sees them using their overwhelming strong team to break up the race almost absurdly and unfathomably early before further whittling down the already-decanted group to give themselves a numerical advantage that allows him to pick and choose their end-of-race matchups according to the strengths and weaknesses of the riders involved.
The only time things looked to be at all in doubt was when their attempt to launch Jorgenson clear at the end of Omloop fell flat, and the race came back together with a peloton full of some relatively fresh riders.
In theory, this imperiled Visma since it meant riders in the peloton could potentially outsprint Visma’s three main riders, who had been dangling out front for over half the race, but, in practice, their overwhelming depth meant they could simply have a quality rider like Tratnik (who has had an incredibly good spring across both stage and one-day racing) take advantage of the situation by attacking as soon as the junction was made. Pulling him back, especially with a strong companion like Politt, after just having reeled in such a strong group, was always going to be close to impossible for the depleted peloton.
And, as an ultimate trump card, Van Aert and Laporte’s sprinting ability meant that even had Tratnik been reeled in, they likely would have been able to win the reduced bunch sprint, especially since De Lie, a strong sprinter himself, had gone so deep attempting to drop them on the Muur (due to being stuck in a tactical position where that was his only chance of winning).
2) Wout van Aert’s altered Classics build-up: If there was any doubt about Van Aert’s decision to ride a subdued Cyclocross schedule and eschew the major one-week spring stage races while solely focusing on the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix, his stratospheric levels of fitness, which allowed him to act as in his own domestique roles as he broke up the race and paced small groups off the front, before winning reduced sprints on both Saturday and Sunday, showed that his spring build-up is clearly working and that he, along with Mathieu van der Poel, is simply on another level in these cobbled races, where relatively heavier riders have a slight advantage over smaller, punchier riders.
Of course, everything will change once Van Aert’s main Classics rival, Mathieu van der Poel, joins the mix at E3, Gent-Wevelgem, Flanders, and Roubaix. Van Aert’s spring will ultimately be judged by his performance against Van der Poel at the biggest spring races, but he is clearly off to an extremely strong start.
With elite riders going backward nearly 90km from the finish line at a traditionally mild race like Kuurne, and riders as strong as Wellens and Lazkano struggling to hold Van Aert’s while off the front, it is clear the Belgian star is coming into 2024 with a serious eye on his home race.
And an upcoming extended altitude trip to Mount Teide means he could be at an even higher level the next time we see him at E3.
3) Arnaud de Lie: For the second straight season, the 21-year-old Belgian sensation appeared to be one of the strongest opening weekend riders, and, potentially even the future of these races, but, for the second straight season, he walks away without a victory despite incredible form and a well-drilled Lotto-Dtsy team.
Even with a strong sprint and ability to get up and over the toughest cobbled climbs with Van Aert, De Lie was always going to struggle due to being so outnumbered in the front group, and was left with few viable options other than dropping the others on the Muur and and riding clear for the win.
Had the peloton not reeled in his group and he been able to bridge solo to Jorgenson after the Muur on Saturday, Visma would have been a real problem on their hands. But, alas, even this best-case scenario relies on quite a few hypothetical breaks rolling his way.
De Lie’s plight highlights just how difficult it is to challenge the Visma phalanx without the ability to simply drop Van Aert and ride clear, which is how Pogačar and Van der Poel won the two biggest one-day Classics in 2023.
4) Two superteams while the rest are racing for scraps: Over Saturday and Sunday, UAE and Visma took home 5 of the 6 total podium cobbled Classics spots (Movistar somewhat inexplicably took the sixth with a fantastic ride from their breakout young star Lazkano), and seven out of the nine major races.
Even amongst the elite top-tier, a team with the budget and overall level of UAE was relegated to racing for the podium at both Omloop and Kuurne. Even with Tim Wellens, who was one of the only riders capable of matching Van Aert’s pace throughout the weekend, UAE had to leave happy with two-second places.
This should serve as a somewhat dire warning for other teams, like the formerly dominant Soudal-QuickStep and Ineos, who appeared thoroughly outgunned and without a clear path to victory in either race.
While Ineos’ Tom Pidcock made it into the elite lead group at Omloop, and he put in a strong sprint to finish 8th, he was the weakest rider in the group on the climbs and, for the second straight year, appeared to lack the punch he packed in his inaugural 2021 Classics season. He still has time to improve before his major objectives in the Ardennes, but his fallow period, which started after last season’s spring campaign, continues to stretch on.
A sure sign of the apocalypse is that Soudal-QuickStep, formerly the kings of the Belgian Classics, got their best result across the two races with 21-year-old American Luke Lamperti’s seventh place at Kuurne.
5) Visma still has to prove their ‘swarm’ strategy will work against the best one-day riders: This pair of dominant performances from Visma suggests the rest of the Spring Classics teams and contenders have their work cut out for them if they want to challenge in the bigger races later this spring. But, as we saw in 2023, success on opening weekend doesn’t necessarily translate to wins at the one-day gems: the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix.
While having the strongest team allows you to dominate these second-tier races, having the strongest rider is proving to be key at the top-tier one-day Classics.
With Van Aert looking to be close to the highest level we’ve seen him at this point of the season, Visma is undoubtedly off to a good start. Still, we won’t know if their Classics seasons will ultimately be judged a success until we see them go head-to-head against, and defeat, the very best one-day riders at the highest octane sections of the biggest races.
UAE Tour Final Weekend, O Gran Camiño, and Le Samyn breakdowns are coming to premium subscribers later this week…
Look forward to the write up on Le Samyn. No, that’s not a veiled reference to Arnaud de Lie acting his age (no judgements because thankfully I didn’t have a camera following me at age 21). It’s hopefully the race that introduced you to the voice of Jose Been (@josebeentv ). Andrew, your BTP co-host, and I both had the same reaction hearing her depth of knowledge- though I admittedlyI took the nerd factor up a notch by finding a list of her upcoming events 🙃