After two days of scintillating racing, Opening Weekend kicked off the Spring Classics with a bang. Jumbo Visma enjoyed a dominant weekend, with four riders on the two men’s podiums over the two days, with Dylan van Baarle winning on Saturday’s Omloop Het Nieuwsblad Men and Tiesj Benoot storming from the breakaway at Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne. SD Worx enjoyed dominance of their own, too, as Lotte Kopecky soloed to victory ahead of Lorena Wiebes on Saturday’s Omloop Het Nieuwsblad Women.
As the first one-day classic races of the season, Opening Weekend provides the first opportunity for riders to test new equipment on the cobbled Belgian terrain that they’ll face again and again in the coming months. That means they usually use the races to trial new tech, with a view to using them at more important races later.
The first big tech story actually came from the Lotto-Dstny course recon on the Wednesday before the race. Victor Campanaerts was spotted using a bike with an enormous 62T chainring, complete with Classified Powershift two-speed hub gear, wide tyres and narrow handlebars.
From the weekend itself, on the morning of Omloop Het Nieuwsblad on Saturday, we learned that Campenaerts’ spare bike was also set up in the wild configuration, proving his commitment to the tech.
We later spent time with the winners’ bikes from the opening day, and then on the morning of Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne on Sunday, we spent time with Taco van der Hoorn’s Cube Litening – a gallery of which is coming soon. Interestingly, when he subsequently rode past us on it, we noticed something unusual about his leg warmers. It turns out he might have found a loophole in the UCI sock height rule with aero leg warmers, which he spoke to us about.
So far, so busy, but that’s not all. We also spent plenty of time getting up close and personal with the teams’ bikes, photographing anything that stood out. The best of those images, approximately 40 of them, are embedded below, so grab a coffee, scroll on down, and enjoy.
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