Racing
The Belgian bike racing season opens Saturday at the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad The season so far has been a prelude.
In Belgium, at least, bike racing begins on Opening Weekend at the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad. We’re bringing Stefan Bissegger , Owain Doull , Jens Keukeleire , Jonas Rutsch , Tom Scully , James Shaw , and Julius van den Berg to the first great Flemish race of 2023.
Sunny stage races in Australia or the French riviera are good prep, but, for the cycling-mad people of Flanders, the real tests of a bike racer will always be their one-day classics, which start this Saturday in Gent. For over a century, the Flemish countryside has been mapped in their collective consciousness by the feats of cyclists, racing across the small, steep bergs and cobblestoned roads of their farmland. The Omloop is the first of these spring races, which are run over much of the same terrain, leading up to the grand finale at the Tour of Flanders on the second of April.
Our sports director Sebastian Langeveld won the Omloop in 2011. Having grown up watching the classics from across the border in the Netherlands, it was the greatest sporting honor of his career.
“The way I always saw it, and the way people from northern Europe always see it, is that it is the first real classic,” Sebastian says. “Everybody then goes to Tirreno, Paris-Nice, and then you have to wait a couple more weeks for E3, Dwaars door Vlaanderen, and the […]
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