Wout van Aert, Tadej Pogacar, Fabio Jakobson - nine talking points from ‘Opening Weekend’ and the UAE Tour

Even with the cancellation of the Tour Down Under, subscribers to discovery+, Eurosport and GCN+ have been gorging themselves on cycling for over a month now. But as much as an uphill assault from Nairo Quintana on Montagne de Lure in the Tour de Provence, or Remco Evenepoel’s brilliance in the Algarve, or the Wout Poels revival in Andalucia can all set pulses racing, everyone knows that it isn’t until the so-called ‘Opening Weekend’ that the season’s action really gets going.

This year, the first WorldTour stage race of the year, the UAE Tour, paved the way for the opening cobbled classic, Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, which took place on a ‘Super Saturday’ that also featured six high-octane and action-packed races. Then, on Sunday, Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne provided the cherry on the cake – an astonishing race of twists and turns, and one which wasn’t decided until the final fevered pedal strokes once a leading trio were swept up just metres from the line.

Time to take stock and draw some conclusions from what was a barnstorming weekend of racing, off the back of what had already been a pretty decent showing. Here are the main talking points…

In his first outing of the year, Tadej Pogacar lay down a huge marker. Besides an untimely puncture the day after he took the race lead at Jebel Jais, the 23-year-old Slovenian looked utterly supreme in what is essentially UAE Team Emirates’ home race.

Placing fourth in the short 9km time trial on only his third race day of the year was, perhaps, a reminder that Pogacar is only human after all. But he followed this up with the first of his two uphill wins. The second, which secured a second successive red jersey in the UAE Tour, came after he left a lean-looking Adam Yates for dead on the smooth grind of Jebel Hafeet.

Pogacar is only warming up but already he looks an unbeatable prospect for the Tour de France.

Being in possession of the best rider in the peloton has not made UAE Team Emirates complacent. On the contrary, their recruitment drive over the winter was fairly relentless and is already bearing fruit. The early travails of German sprinter Pascal Ackermann aside, the likes of Joao Almeida and George Bennett have already slipped in seamlessly to Pogacar’s support crew.

Around two kilometres from the summit of Jebel Hafeet, once leaders Pogacar and Adam Yates (Ineos Grenadiers) momentarily eased up, Almeida was able to close the gap and power past the duo, completely changing the dynamic of the stage. The Portuguese now offers UAE both support but also a plan B for these types of finishes. Throw into the mix the lieutenant capabilities of Bennett – who knows Pogacar’s rivals at Jumbo-Visma inside out – plus the ongoing force that is Rafal Majka, and UAE’s options are scary.

Meanwhile, back in France, Brandon McNulty’s excellent start to the season continued apace. Having already won his first race of the season, the Trofeo Calvia back in January, the American soloed to glory in the Faun-Ardeche Classic on Saturday in a strong field that also included the likes of compatriot Sepp Kuss, Frenchman Guillaume Martin and the German Lennard Kamna.

Like Pogacar, McNulty is only 23 years old and has his best years ahead. The arsenal being assembled at UAE is quite extraordinary.

It doesn’t get much better than winning your first race of the season. Although it does, because Wout van Aert’s name has become synonymous with winning races – and the way the Belgian champion went about winning his season’s curtain-raiser at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad was arguably more impressive than the actual fact of yet another milestone reached.

Striking out solo with 13km remaining, Van Aert made his decisive move ahead of the Bosberg and there was no looking back, the 27-year-old underlining his Ronde van Vlaanderen credentials with victory at the first time of asking over the cobbled bergs of Flanders in 2022. He became the first rider to win Omloop on his first race day in 42 years, and underlined just why he is to the classics what Pogacar is to Grand Tours.

It will be interesting to see how a certain Pogacar fares when he makes his debut on these roads at Dwars door Vlaanderen in late March and then, four days later, at the Ronde. Only then will we perhaps have a true measure of Van Aert’s brilliance.

While UAE’s stage racers where honing their craft on home soil on the Arabian peninsula, Jumbo-Visma went to great lengths over Opening Weekend to showcase the fruits of their own recruitment drive, while underlining that they are much more than a one-man band in the classics.

If an over-reliance on Van Aert was at times their – and the Belgian’s – downfall last year, then Jumbo-Visma seem to be entering the spring classic season with many more arrows in their quiver. It’s early days, but what an addition Tiesj Benoot could be to Jumbo-Visma. In his debut on Saturday, the 27-year-old acted as a foil for Van Aert, taking the pressure off his leader ahead of the Muur van Geraardsbergen and paving the way for the Belgian champion’s decisive attack.

Where before all eyes were on Van Aert and the Belgian often found himself marked out of contention, his rivals won’t be able to resort to such spoil tactics if someone of Benoot’s calibre is ready to pounce.

A day later, Benoot – indistinguishable from the rider who last year largely pedalled squares at Team DSM – was once again dictating play by riding aggressively in the attack group at Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne. When he faded, it was another Jumbo-Visma new recruit who took the reins. Freed from the red confines of Cofidis, Christophe Laporte was reborn in the yellow and black of his new team – the Frenchman the driving force of a plucky leading trio that also included Jhonatan Narvaez of Ineos and the indefatigable Taco van der Hoorn, more on whom later.

The presence of fast-finisher Laporte meant Jumbo-Visma did not need to chase behind. And although Benoot and his new pals made a bungle of one corner with 10km remaining, once back in the fold they were able to sit on and disrupt the flow of the pack behind. Sure, it didn’t work – Laporte was caught just metres from the line and Mike Teunissen wasn’t a factor in the sprint – but it showed more depth and a collection of forces that, over time, could take the focus off the kingly presence of Van Aert.

It's too early to make any firm conclusions, but both Benoot and Laporte – having stagnated at their previous teams – look like they could make a real difference at their new home. And away from the classics, the Jumbo-Visma machine is purring away too: with Primoz Roglic making his first appearances of the season over the weekend, it was young teammate Jonas Vingegaard – runner-up at last year’s Tour in Roglic’s absence – who took the spoils in the Drome Classic on Sunday.

At the end of a nail-biting finish – and an exceptional 74th edition of Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne – the cream came to the top, the in-form Fabio Jakobsen powering past the leading trio with Caleb Ewan hot on his heels. It was a timely reminder of Quick-Step’s class – and a get-out-of-jail card following their struggles at Omloop on Saturday and for much of Sunday’s race.

Frenchman Florian Senechal was Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl’s best place rider at Omloop, his ninth place salt to the wound inflicted by Van Aert. And on Sunday, it looked like Patrick Lefevere’s so-called Wolfpack had had their teeth blunted by an Opening Weekend best forgotten fast. Relentless pressure from the likes of Ineos, Jumbo-Visma, UAE Emirates and Ag2R Citroen caught Quick-Step out and almost conspired to see the sprinter-friendly race won from the break.

But Jakobsen’s train kept its cool and came good just when it mattered, sling-shotting their man to glory on the home straight. Jakobsen surged past the remaining escapees with just 200m to spare and despite a late surge from the Lotto Soudal’s Ewan, he held the Australian at bay to take a fifth win of the season.

While teammate Mark Cavendish has also been picking up wins in the Tour of Oman and UAE Tour, Jakobsen looks to be in a different class – not just from the British veteran, but from everyone else. Leaving Cav out of the Tour de France team when he is just one win away from the outright stage record would seem both cruel and a marketing folly – but how can you keep a man of Jakobsen’s stature away from making his long-awaited debut in the world’s biggest bike race?

Perhaps Lefevere needs to be bold and select both – although it’s a long road from here to July.

With a combined aged of 80 between them, it was a suitably vintage weekend for Alejandro Valverde and Annemiek van Vleuten for Movistar.

Van Vleuten, 39, arrived at the final of Omloop Het Nieuwsblad alongside fast-finisher Demi Vollering of SD Worx. On paper, the 25-year-old has a better kick and had beaten her compatriot to Liege-Bastogne-Liege glory last year. But Vollering took a back seat in the approach to Ninove, her sandbagging antics and refusal to take a pull incurring the wrath of her older rival.

This much have made the win all the sweeter for Van Vleuten who, after making her annoyance known to a deadpan Vollering, proceeded to outlast her rival on the home straight. It was an astonishing 88th career win for Van Vleuten, who went early and emphatically, somehow maintaining her speed in a frenzy of elbows and knees after Vollering momentarily drew level, before wearing down her opponent as class and experience came up trumps.

Just moments earlier, some 1,600 kilometres south-west in Galicia, Valverde rolled back the years after beating Canada’s Michael Woods in a Movistar sandwich following an expert leadout by teammate Ivan Sosa in stage 2 of the inaugural Gran Camino. By finishing quicker than the Israel-Premier Tech rider in Sunday’s time trial, Valverde also secured the overall victory.

It’s now been 11 years since Valverde failed to pick up at least one pro win during a season – a record which stretches to 19 years if you paper over his two-year doping ban from 2010 and the subsequent fall-out. Should the 41 add more victories to his name beyond next month’s Volta a Catalunya then he will overtake Davide Rebellin as the oldest winner of a professional bike race.

Only a fool would bet against him breaking that particular record.

While we’re on the subject of Gran Camino, a special mention should go to Ukraine’s Mark Padun who picked up his first win for new team EF Education-Easy Post. Victory in Sunday’s 15.8km time trial gave the 25-year-old the seventh win of his career and saw him rise onto the final podium at a race which must have been a psychological ordeal for him to ride.

Padun’s win came two days after his compatriot Anatolii Budiak (Terengganu Polygon Cycling Team) triumphed in stage six of the Tour of Rwanda to bring cheer to Ukraine on the day Russian forces invaded their home country.

Earlier in the week, viewers of the UAE Tour were met with the uncomfortable sight of daily offensives from Gazprom-Rusvelo who, in one stage, had three riders in a three-man break. It was perhaps typical, then, that a continued employment of this aggressive tactic resulted in the peloton making a hash of the chase in stage 6 as Gazprom used their power in numbers to take a win.

With German football club Schalke 04 having removed the logo of chief sponsor Gazprom from its shirts, the under-fire cycling team took a win in Dubai. That it was Mathias Vacek, a 19-year-old Czech rider making his WorldTour debut, as opposed to one of the team’s four Russian riders who took the spoils, further complicated matters. What should have been a wonderful day for Vacek was somewhat soured by the heinous actions of his paymasters.

On paper, the British team had a shocker on Opening Weekend with Tom Pidcock’s 18th place in Omloop their best result on Saturday before Magnus Sheffield took a team-best 29th in Kuurne on Sunday.

But that only told part of the story, with Ineos Grenadiers’ young and exciting team riding aggressively and with purpose in both races – and almost pulling off a coup through Jhonatan Narvaez on Sunday. The Ecuadorian, along with Pidcock, Sheffield and Ben Turner, animated both races and gave directeur sportif Roger Hammond many reasons to be cheerful.

“As a team, I’ve not seen that many team performances like that in my lifetime. We come out of the weekend with really something to look forward to. The guys should be really proud and very excited about what’s to come in April,” Hammond told Velonews.

With British duo Ethan Hayter and Ben Swift, who crashed on Sunday, building themselves up to form, and 19-year-old Sheffield – who swooped to stage 3 glory in the Vuelta a Andalucia a week previously – still finding his feet in the peloton, the future is bright for Ineos.

In Pidcock they have one of the most exciting talents around – and someone who has already proved himself capable of getting the better of Wout van Aert in a head-to-head. Far from being discouraged by missing out on top 10s on opening weekend, Ineos should feel confident of the foundations they are laying. Once a team that specialised solely in the Tour de France, Ineos is slowly building up a young and talented classics army who could well upset the established teams sooner rather than later.

Not many riders would feature in the day’s main breakaway, and then again in a final trio almost defying the odds – and then, once toppled with the finish line gaping, have the good humour to smile despite everything. Well, step forward Taco van der Hoorn. The Dutchman from Intemarche-Wanty-Gobert not only has one of the best names in the peloton, he’s also building up quite a reputation at defying the odds and upsetting the apple cart – remember stage 3 of last year’s Giro d’Italia?

The 28-year-old was at it again on Sunday, coming within 200m of contesting a win that seemed destined for the sprinters. What’s more, Van der Hoorn admitted after the race that his attack wasn’t just a wild throw of the dice, but something he’d planned “already in November” when deciding his race schedule. Take a bow, son. Never again will you see a better tenth place finish.

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