Jasper Philipsen wins Kuurne - Bruxelles - Kuurne! Kooij, Merlier, Milan all beaten by Belgian sprinter

Alpecin-Deceuninck have won their first race of the season. The Belgian team and Jasper Philipsen had both so far had a rough time, but have opened the tally for the 2025 season at Kuurne - Bruxelles - Kuurne which ended in a bunch sprint.

After Omloop Het Nieuwsblad ended in a sprint, several teams started off the second event of the 'Opening Weekend' with the intention of attacking and preventing the same scenario. Over the past two years Visma won with such scenario, but the odds were always on the sprinter teams' side.

Ward Vanhoof, Ceriel Desal, Dries de Bondt, Tomas Kopecky, Huub Artz, Axandre Van Petegem and Marius Mayrhofer jumped into the day's breakaway and they enjoyed a gap of a few minutes over a lot of the race, well deep into the hilly section actually.

In the peloton, action kicked off with 95 kilometers to go as Jhonatan Narváez attacked with two more riders - who he would later drop. The Ecuadorian hoped for someone to jump across but in the most difficult ascents the peloton had small splits but no meaningful gaps. Stefan Bissegger and Tim Wellens, separately, did not attack but simply rode away from the peloton in a moment of slowing down. Wout van Aert was amongst those who attacked several times behind but always covered, it wasn't possible to bridge across to the Wellens group.

The UAE rider and Bissegger bridged over to the breakaway and began working efficiently. Soudal - Quick-Step, Cofidis and Lidl-Trek controlled the peloton however and the gap was never larger than a minute, and it never seemed like the peloton was going to be put under pressure. The catch was made with still 12 kilometers to go.

A tense finale with a crash for a Bahrain rider, but it was a regular bunch sprint at the end of the day. Alpecin this time around did it perfectly, and with both Jonathan Milan and Tim Merlier completely out of the first positions in the peloton, Philipsen enjoyed a textbook leadout from Kaden Groves to take a comfortable win ahead of Olav Kooij and Hugo Hofstetter.