Jasper Philipsen wins Kuurne - Bruxelles - Kuurne! Kooij, Merlier, Milan all beaten by Belgian sprinter
Cycling
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.
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- That's how the finish line camera works
KerisVroom14-04-2025 - What a great Paris Roubaix! Having the best competition always elevates the race.awp14-04-2025
- I love Andrie’s fierce loyalty and dedication to his sonmij14-04-2025
- obviously loads to say about mathieu and tadej, who are now pretty clearly the towering giants of this generation. but i also kept thinking about how, over such a short period of time, Alpecin has become just a staggeringly dominant classics team, and it’s not just the one man show of mvdp. watching jasper phillipsen turn himself inside out to take pressure off mathieu, even for a short while, at a critical stage of the race shows the tremendous unity of this team. winning BOTH milano san remo AND roubaix THREE YEARS IN A ROW?! Damn…OCexile14-04-2025
- Special effects on the spokes?Mistermaumau13-04-2025
- It was definitely exciting but not the greatest race in my opinion. Mechanicals had a lot to do with the result and the race was basically decided by a crash. It was a weird start with not that much drive and fight to form the breakaway and team tactics and moves were pretty weak or non-existent at all.heinz13-04-2025
- So, in the end Martin got real time on the line and actually drop a place in the GC. the spirit of the 3km rule is to save riders that are afected by crashes or mechanicals when these events are not their fault. Some cases where the rider is to "blame" are, for pragmatical reasons, i guess, also covered by the rule. But when you are on the attack in a rolling terrain and you crash, alone, it doesn't make much sense to apply the rule, even if you are in the last km. It's completely different from the situation where there's a big crash in the bunch in the last kms and you get stuck behind fallen riders, for example.heinz13-04-2025
- Those motorbike riders were pretty good at taking that corner, probably fooled him into thinking it couldn’t be so difficult, notice how in comparison, MVDP looks like his bike had ABS. Tadej was close to staying on the bike but he kept hold of his front brake trying to come to a complete standstill, had he eased the pressure to let the wheel roll on a little he’d not have gone over.Mistermaumau13-04-2025
- Always classy towards his rivalsMistermaumau13-04-2025
- I’m surprised how well he reacted, not sure many others would have noticed something coming from that angle. Worse than the fact it actually hit his face (the throwing speed wasn’t that high but the impact of him arriving against it at almost 50km/h makes incredibly hard) is what it could have done if it had landed badly and made him crash and you see it almost slipped under his back wheel. I have seen a peleton spread over the floor from a loose bottle.Mistermaumau13-04-2025