PREVIEW | Deutschland Tour 2025 prologue - Can Visma's van Aert and Brennan already get ahead of the competition?

From the 20th to the 24th of August the German calendar continues, this time around with the country's most important stage-race of the year: The Deutschland Tour. We preview the prologue.

The race begins in Essen with a short prologue of 3 kilometers in length. It's not going to be a difficult challenge and it won't be a technical prologue either, but it will create an order in the GC and provide a few specialists with a rare opportunity to perform.

The race will feature four flat days afterwards, some of them with a few short climbs, so don't underestimate the importance of this prologue. Whilst the differences will be short, with a good degree of certainty they will be the difference between leading the race or sitting second or third at some degree later in the race - and on this event, there isn't a stage where you can with certainty make the difference, but instead riders will have to go by tactics and timing a lot more.

You should expect to see a few riders take big risks and this is one of those days where risks can be highly rewarded, as there isn't much distance to actually create space between the top riders in terms of seconds. We have a prologue specialist in Maikel Zijlaard who will be a very interesting contender and on this effort you don't have to look at the traditional time-trial specialists, but instead those sprinters who can handle a longer effort such as Soren Waerenskjold or Matthew Brennan (Wout van Aert is not a sprinter but is included in this category as well).

*** Soren Waerenskjold, Matthew Brennan, Maikel Zijlaard
** Iván Romeo, Wout van Aert, Brandon McNulty, Luke Lamperti
* Simone Consonni, Jonathan Milan, Riley Sheehan, Kaden Groves, Jan Christen, Jhonatan Narváez, Axel Laurance, Jordi Meeus, Danny van Poppel, Mattia Cattaneo

Pick: Matthew Brennan