Bicycle Racing News and Opinion,
Wednesday, April 16, 2025
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2024 Tour de France | 2024 Giro d'Italia
Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else. - Margaret Mead
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Current racing:
- April 15 - 18: Giro d'Abruzzo
Upcoming racing:
- April 18: De Brabantse Pijl
- April 20: Amstel Gold Race
- April 20: Tour du Doubs
- April 21 - 25: Tour of the Alps
- April 23: La Flèche Wallonne
Latest completed racing:
- April 12-13: Paris-Roubaix
- April 7 - 12: Vuelta Ciclista al Pais Vasco
- April 8 - 11: Region Pays de la Loire Tour
- April 9: Scheldeprijs
- April 6: Ronde van Vlaanderen
- April 5: GP Miguel Indurain
- April 5: Volta NXT Classic
- April 4: Route Adélie de Vitre
- April 2: Dwars door Vlaanderen
- April 2: Paris - Camembert Lepetit
- March 24 - 30: Volta Ciclista a Catalunya
- March 30: Gent - Wevelgem
- March 30: La Roue Tourangelle
We posted the report from winner Alessandro Covi's UAE Team Emriates-XRG with the results.
Here the report from Team Polti-VisitMalta:
No top-10 finish, but once again Team Polti VisitMalta played a leading role on Italian roads. The opening stage of the Giro d’Abruzzo ended in an explosive sprint won by Covi (UAE) after a race in which the squad led by Stefano Zanatta and Orlando Maini placed three riders at the front and launched a twenty-kilometre attack that briefly sparked dreams of glory.
Alessandro Covi wins stage one. Sprint photo
Earlier Gabriele Raccagni, Davide De Cassan and Samuele Zoccarato were among those chasing down the early 3-men breakaway that animated the stage. Then, on the climb of Giuliano Teatino, the breakaway was caught and eight riders launched a counterattack: the first to go was Alessandro Tonelli, followed by Ludovico Crescioli and six others. This group was reeled in 7 km from the finish, on another uphill stretch. The final sprint came from a reduced bunch of 40 riders, including six from Polti VisitMalta: Ludovico Crescioli finished 13th, Alex Martín 15th, Fernando Tercero 17th.
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Ludovico Crescioli: “Having only returned to racing three days ago in Reggio Calabria after a two-month break due to a knee issue, I’m really happy with both my performance and that of my teammates. I even tried to follow the best in the finale — after the earlier efforts I just didn’t have the legs, but these are good signs!”
Stefano Zanatta: “Our guys showed with their actions how motivated they were coming into this race. We stirred things up to try and go on the attack, but unfortunately the Israel team missed out on the move and chased us down. Still, it was a great collective effort from us — one we hope to repeat in the tougher terrain ahead.”
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Here’s the news from Evenepoel’s Team Soudal Quick-Step
Remco Evenepoel is ready to pin on a number for the first time this season for Friday’s edition of Brabantse Pijl, the appetizer before the start of the Ardennes Classics. The double Olympic Champion, who completed an altitude training camp in Sierra Nevada with some of his teammates, has competed in the Belgian one-day race only once before, in 2022, when he finished in the top ten after a strong ride.
Remco Evenpoel finishing second in the 2024 Giro di Lombardia. Sirotti photo
“I am counting the days until I can race with the guys again for the first time in more than six months. It’s been a long time since my previous outing with the team, but I am happy to be so close to my return. I’ve worked hard all these months, I’ve been on a solid training camp in Spain, and I feel good and motivated for Brabantse. I’m not going there with any specific goals, as the most important thing will be to get the race rhythm back after all this time”, Remco said.
Joining Evenepoel on the Soudal Quick-Step line-up for the 65th edition of Brabantse Pijl will be Pascal Eenkhoorn, Gil Gelders, British Champion Ethan Hayter, Thomas Pesenti – who comes from the Devo Team – Pepijn Reinderink and Pieter Serry, a podium finisher here in 2012.
Running between Beersel and Overijse, over a 162.6km course comprising a total of 21 climbs – some of them featuring cobbles – the race is set to be a demanding one, without a single moment of respite for the riders. The last difficulty of the day will once again be the famous S-Bocht Overijse, coming just before the finish, a hill which averages 4.2% over 1300 meters.
“It’s not a World Tour event, but that doesn’t mean Brabantse Pijl is an easy race. On the contrary, it’s one of the hardest one-day races of the spring, with countless climbs and narrow roads that should make for an action-packed and really tense day. We have a strong team for Friday and we hope to be in the mix and get a good result at the end of the day”, said Soudal Quick-Step sports director Dries Devenyns.
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Here’s the team’s news:
Lidl-Trek are thrilled to reveal that Swede Jakob Söderqvist will step into its WorldTour squad with a two-year contract starting January 1, 2026.
Söderqvist, 21, has repeatedly proven his ability as a time-triallist since joining the American team’s development structure, Lidl-Trek Future Racing. In 2024 he finished 2nd in the Tour de la Provence prologue, behind teammate Mads Pedersen, then went onto further success against the clock at the Giro Next Gen and Swedish championships, before collecting two silver medals at the under-23 World and European championships. His success wasn’t limited to the time trial bike, as he added wins on the road in the Tour de Bretagne and Flèche du Sud to his palmarès.
Over the course of the year, Söderqvist claimed a remarkable seven victories: four time trials, two road stages, and one general classification.
Although it was clear that the Swede had the talent to jump to the WorldTour, Lidl-Trek’s performance team believed that Söderqvist would benefit from a further year in the development squad to ease the transition to the WorldTour. In 2025, Jakob has been racing a combination of races with the development team alongside a host of lower-ranked races with the elites, a plan designed to help him hit the ground running in 2026 when he would join the WorldTour team full-time.
Söderqvist showed time and time again that there is far more to him than his prowess against the clock. In Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana he impressed riding in support of Jonathan Milan, seamlessly fitting into a top-level sprint train. A couple of months later he was instrumental in Edward Theuns’ emotional victory at Bredene-Koksijde Classic, almost single-handedly keeping the chasing peloton at bay.
Most recently, on this past Sunday in Hell, Söderqvist more than proved his classics credentials after dominating Paris-Roubaix Espoirs with Albert Withen Philipsen. Although the win was awarded to the Dane, the pair crossed the line arm in arm, celebrating their joint achievement with an iconic image that shows just how bright the future is for Lidl-Trek.
Jakob Söderqvist winning stage three of the 2024 Tour de Bretagne.
Speaking of his path to join the WorldTour with Lidl-Trek, Jakob Söderqvist said, “Stepping into the WorldTour team means the start of a new chapter in my sporting career and a chapter where the possibilities are endless. All these things are pieces that I just dreamed of having before. I realised that I wanted to see how good I could become, so this chapter is about when I have these possibilities and try to make the most of them and see how far we can go.
“The confirmation that I would join the WorldTour team wasn’t sudden, but it was more a build-up since I was doing good results last year and felt like I got the kind of confirmation that it could be around the corner. I knew it was going well, but at the same time I was so busy with everything at that point, so I didn’t really reflect on it much. I just knew that I was on the way, but then actually sitting down and realising what position I am in in the sport is quite unreal and its also unreal how quickly it progressed from just a year or two ago when I didn’t know if it would be possible to make it professional. Now we are here and this is a big relief in a way, but also something that excites me a lot to really just see how I can work with this from now on in my own matter together with a team on the highest level and it’s just, yeah, a really fun prospect.
“I chose to turn pro with Lidl-Trek because I want to have influence and play an active role in deciding what I’m doing, not just following a copy/paste plan that some teams give you. Lidl-Trek have really shown that we are on the same page with this and I really feel at home. It’s so personal, like relationships within the team. I have already some really, really good close friends that I invite my home and we share ideas. We care about each other and share joy in each other’s success really, which you don’t find on the same level on other teams.
“Taking this extra year with the development team has been a good choice. It’s really just dividing the step up into two pieces, getting more support towards the level where the WorldTour is, but without the expectation. All the pressure and all the professionalism to live up to and everything, you can, like ease into it. I feel like with the two steps, there’s less risk and less things that could be hard for you to get your head around when you do make the step up.
“Already this year, my development was beyond what I would expect and maybe this comes around again, maybe it’s only a small step more, but for sure I’m in a good position now and I feel like when opportunities come, I have the tools to take advantage of them.”
Sebastian Andersen, Lidl-Trek Future Racing DS said, “I think Jakob has a huge potential. He’s fairly new to cycling and he is a bit of a rough diamond in the sport. He possesses a big engine and he has incredible power, which we’ve seen all through last year. First in Provence, where he almost beat a guy like Mads in the Prologue. But he’s not only doing it once, he’s done it several times. Again, in the Tour de Bretagne, the way he won – it was a super hard day with rain and tough terrain, and he really put everybody in the peloton on the limit. Then, he performed again at the Giro Next Gen, winning the Prologue. He was quite confident about that as he had focused on it well. And then the results he achieved at the Swedish national championships, the Europeans and the Worlds – it’s a clear sign of his great potential.
“This year Jakob has been doing a middle step, where he has been racing a little bit with the WorldTour team as well, learning even more, and putting another level on top of his already good starting point to help him be more consistent in his approach of racing. Doing a transitional year is great – just because you had one good season, doesn’t mean that you know everything. And for Jakob to have the confidence and the trust in us, believing that this is a good plan for him, is a sign of a good way of working together.”
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