The Classics season is upon us, Saturday’s Omloop Het Nieuwsblad ushering in the cobbles season and standing as the first 2026 WorldTour race in Europe. Mathieu van der Poel, making both his road season and Omloop debut, was able to skirt trouble on the Molenberg and dislodge his companions on the Muur to take his first title.
Preliminaries
The Omloop is known for a reduced field sprinting it out for the flowers, but over the last four years there have three solo victors, winning by margins of anything from three to 22 seconds. Uno-X’s Søren Wærenskjold shocked the world in the 2025 edition. On Saturday, cyclocross and road colossus van der Poel made his road season debut. Wout van Aert, having gone through ankle surgery in January after breaking it while ‘cross racing, postponed his season debut until March 3.
Guillaume Boivin was the lone Canadian.
The Course
This year’s route featured 13 cobbled sections, some of which were climbs, over 208 km from Bruges to Ninove. The famed Muur de Geraardsbergen (1 km of 9.2 percent) summited with 16 kilometers to go. Hard on its heels came the Bosberg (1 km of 5.8%) cresting with 11.5 kilometers remaining. It was chilly, windy and damp, calling for arm warmers and gilets.
Saturday’s breakaway was a mostly-French quintet that wasn’t given a very long leash. It reached the third feature, 2.5 km of Lange Munte cobbles, with a 2:45 gap. Everyone looked cold. Soudal-QuickStep was among the teams working at the peloton’s front.
On the way to the Eikenberg, the peloton in echelons and Tim Wellens on the front, Wellens’ teammates crashed, one of several wrecks on the day. Tom Pidcock was dislodged on the Eikenberg with van der Poel’s Alpecin-Premier Tech pulling. Jasper Philipsen and Paul Magnier lost contact.
Molenberg was a formidable 400-metre cobbled climb at 7.2 percent. UAE-Emirates and Lidl-Trek wound it up at the front. Matteo Trentin crashed at the bottom and held up most of the riders. Florian Vermeersch had been on the attack, and van der Poel was able to avoid the tangle and join him. Tim van Dijke made it a trio.
Linking up with the remnants of the breakaway with 45 km to go, the van der Poel gang bounced along a half minutes ahead of the 35-strong chase. The world cyclo-cross champion charged up…
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