Analytics Blog | Opening Weekend

Opening Weekend (and the second analytics blog of the year!)

For people who don’t follow cycling closely, last weekend (24th and 25th Feb) is seen as the first “proper” weekend of racing. Saturday (Omloop Het Nieuwsblad) and Sunday (Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne). Also, for non-cycling fan, Omloop Het Nieuwsblad is shortened to “Omloop” and “Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne” is shortened to “KBK”.

Side Note: I was going to look into the women’s race, but the top 7 didn’t enter the Omloop van het Hageland, but I’ll provide a quick run-through.

Only 31 riders started both races, with Puck Pieterse (Fenix-Deceuninck leading into Day 2. Lorena Wiebes (SDWorx-ProTime) was a further 45 seconds down, with ten riders 1 minute down on and two more riders five seconds further back. In the end, Kristen Faulkner smashed the race, finishing 1 minute 41 seconds ahead of 2nd after a monster solo break. Mischa Bredewold (SDWorx-ProTime) and Pfeiffer Georgi (Team dsm-firmenich PostNL) rounded off the podium. There wasn’t much change other than Faulkner winning the GC with Puck Pieterse in 2nd and Lorena Wiebes in 3rd. Georgi’s bonus seconds got her 4th place on GC - one second off Wiebes (after taking bonus seconds into account). 

If we now focus on the Men’s race… While both are challenging, the theory is that Omloop is much harder than KBK, with KBK having a good chance of being a sprint. 175 riders started Omloop, and 174 started KBK, with 128 riding in both. The majority of the changes reflected the expectations of a sprint occurring in KBK. 

Omloop saw a group of 23 with five Visma Lease-a-Bikes (Wout van Aert, Christian Laporte, Matteo Jorgenson, Tiesj Benoot and Edoardo Affini), the four key men from Ineos (Tom Pidcock, Ben Turner, Luke Rowe, Connor Swift) and four riders from Lidl-Trek (Jonathan Milan, Toms Skuijins, Tim Declercq, Alex Kirsch). Other key favourites, Jasper Philpsen and Arnaud De Lie, were also in the group.  

Omloop saw an expected big attack by the dominant Visma Lease-a-Bike team, where they had three riders (Wout van Aert, Christian Laporte and Matteo Jorgenson) in a group of six (Tom Pidcock of Ineos, Toms Skuijins of Lidl-Trek and Arnaud De Lie). When Visma started attacking, Jorgenson got away but he never really looked strong enough, the break slowed down due to Visma no longer working and the peloton caught up.

My hot take is that Wout van Aert tried to gift the win because he never attacked up the Muur and by the time he did attack, the fresh peloton had returned.

Anyway, it doesn’t matter because fresh from the peloton was Jan Tratnik (another Visma rider) with Nils Politt who counter-attacked to keep up and led out the sprint. There is a whole different piece needed about Nils’ tactics and how Visma went for the win and he was delighted with 2nd. 

The key thing was that Jan Tratnik finished 3 seconds ahead (7 including bonus seconds) of Nils Politt with an additional 5 seconds to the chasing peloton, where Wout van Aert won the 32-man bunch sprint (8 seconds behind his teammate Tratnik). So after “Stage 1” of Opening Weekend, there were 34 riders in contention. Once you exclude riders who didn’t start both races, you have the leaders as:

The main riders not racing both are (all at 18 seconds):

• Laurens Rex (Intermarche-Wanty): 6th

• Tom Pidcock (Ineos): 8th

• Arnaud De Lie (Lotto DSNY): 10th

• Stefan Kung (Groupama-FDJ): 16th

Rex was a surprise performance, while Pidcock and Kung don’t tend to favour sprint finishes. The main surprise of these four is Arnaud De Lie, who finished 10th and is known for his bunch sprint. KBK would favour his characteristics.

KBK didn’t have a sprint, though… a breakaway group of Wout van Aert (Visma), Tim Wellens (UAE Team Emirates), Oier Lazkano (Movistar), and Laurence Pithie (Groupama-FDJ) went clear with 90km to go and never really looked like it was going to be chased down.

There were a few exciting dynamics… would Wout be happy to be the only rider in the lead group? Would Wout be happy to sprint against Pithie (who did very well in TDU and Won Cadel Evans Road Race)? The answer to the first one was yes; the answer to the second one was unclear, but Wout’s attack with 60km to go was the reason why Pithie was dropped. 

In terms of Opening Weekend GC, the lead group had Wout van Aert (Visma) in 3rd overall and 14 seconds behind (after collecting 4 bonus seconds in Omloop) and Tim Wellens (UAE) in 12th (18 seconds behind). Oier Lazkano (Movistar) wasn’t in contention due to losing over 13 minutes in Omloop - however, he could make a big impact if he finished between van Aert and Wellens. With a 3 minute gap to the peloton and 5km to go, Wellens attacked but it didn’t go anywhere. Wout, then, lead out the last 5km ahead of the sprint.

In the sprint and bonus seconds scenario, Wellens needed to win. If Lazkano (who clearly was on the limit for the last 60km) won the sprint, then 2nd place wouldn’t have been enough as Wellens needed to overcome a 4-second deficit (6 seconds for 2nd and Wout collecting another 4 wouldn’t have been sufficient). 

In the end, Wout won the sprint, but Wellens did an impressive job keeping on his wheel after Lazkano attacked with just under 1km to go. So, we have our winner (Wout van Aert) and second place (Tim Wellens)… but what about the rest of the top 10?

Jan Tratnik (Visma Lease-a-Bike), winner of Omloop, didn’t finish in the peloton (came 112th and 3 minutes down), meaning that Nils Politt kept his podium place 9 seconds ahead of the 11 riders who finished 97 seconds down on Wout van Aert.

Looking at Omloop results, Oliver Naesen of AG2R came 4th, while Christian Laporte (Visma Lease-a-Bike) came 5th, and Jasper Stuyven of Lidl-Trek came 7th were the three in contention for the top 5. In the end, Laporte won the bunch sprint (4th on the stage) at KBK, meaning he came 4th overall. Stuyven (10th in KBK) finished 5th and Naesen (16th in KBK) finished in 6th.

Garcia Cortina (Movistar) beat Mike Teunissen (Intermarche-Wanty) for 7th, while Lidl-Trek duo of Alex Kirsch and Toms Skuijins finished 8th and 9th. Soudal-Quickstep’s best performer was Yves Lampaert, who finished 10th.