What’s Opening Weekend? The Exciting Kickoff to the Spring Classics

Opening Weekend yearly kicks off the normal Spring Classics marketing campaign with a bang on the males’s and ladies’s Omloop Het Nieuwsblad hung on Saturday, adopted via Sunday’s Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne for males and the ladies’s Omloop van het Hageland all over the ultimate weekend in February. 

The number of races could also be broadly referred to as the gateway to the Belgian biking season as it raises the curtain on one-day occasions that vary from 1.1, Professional Collection and WorldTour. 

As a part of the trendy top-tier calendar {of professional} motorbike racing, the peloton can have already competed throughout hotter climates at Australia’s Excursion Down Below and Cadel Evans Nice Ocean Street Race, within the Center East on the UAE Excursion, at the side of decrease labeled races throughout southern Europe for the Mallorca Problem, Volta ao Algarve and Ruta del Sol, and in South The usa on the Excursion Colombia.

Opening Weekend thus marks the peloton’s first foray into the oftentimes chilly, rainy, and windy late-winter climate for which Belgium is so widely known and provides a style of what is to come back within the larger one-day races over the next two months.

It’s also all over Opening Weekend that riders and groups take a look at out the lay of the land and an opportunity to gauge every different’s shape, staff brotherly love, and new apparatus throughout Belgium’s well-known cobbled terrain.

General, the normal Opening Weekend in Belgium is what is going to set the tone for the approaching primary Spring Classics and provides us all a glimpse into what we will be expecting on the WorldTour races to practice in Belgium, at races just like the Vintage Brugge-De Panne, E3 Saxo Vintage, Gent-Wevelgem, Dwars door Vlaanderen and the Excursion of Flanders. It is usually a excellent forecast for the Spring Classics held in different countries comparable to Strade Bianche and Milan-San Remo in Italy and Paris-Roubaix in France.

Opening Weekend would possibly no longer let us know the entirety we want to know, however it’s the very best position to start out the narratives that may spread all over the remainder of the one-day races held throughout March and April.

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Omloop Het Nieuwsblad males’s tournament celebrates its 79th version in 2024, held from Gent to Ninove. 

The electrifying feeling in Gent at the morning of Omloop Het Nieuwsblad is palpable as riders, groups, and fanatics await the opener to one of the most biggest blocks of one-day racing all over biking season.

The only-day race brings the peloton into the center of the Flemish Ardennes, and plenty of will recognise the similar cobble sectors and bergs, such because the Berendries, Elverenberg and the well-known Muur van Geraardsbergen-Kapelmuur and Bosberg, because the Excursion of Flanders.

The development was once first held in 1945 as Omloop van Vlaanderen, however modified names as it was once thought to be to be too on the subject of the Ronde van Vlaanderen (Excursion of Flanders). 

Jean Bogaerts was once the primary winner in 1945, and Belgians have long past directly to dominate the race, with simplest 20 winners from out of doors the house country. 3 Belgians – Ernest Sterckx, Joseph Bruyère, and Peter Van Petegem – hang the joint document of 3 victories.

Since its inception, 3 editions were ignored – 1960, 1986, and 2004 – in large part because of the wintery stipulations in Belgium in February. 

The development joined the WorldTour calendar in 2017.

Lotte Kopecky celebrates at end line as race winner all over the 2023 Omloop Het Nieuwsblad Elite Girls (Symbol credit score: Getty Pictures)

The ladies’s Omloop Het Nieuwsblad has a far shorter historical past, having joined the calendar in 2006 with Suzanne de Goede, who received once more in 2009. It celebrates its twentieth version in 2025 and will likely be held from Gent to Ninove.

The only-day race has observed a number of champions at the peak step of the rostrum, together with Mie Lacota, Kirsten Wild, Emma Johansson (two times), Loes Gunnewijk, Tiffany Cromwell, Amy Pieters, Anna van der Breggen (two times), Lizzie Deignan, Lucinda Logo, Christina Siggaard, Chantal van den Broek-Blaak and Annemiek van Vleuten (two times) and Lotte Kopecky.

Omloop Het Nieuwsblad Elite Girls’s race course historically comprises 5 cobbled sectors and 9 climbs, together with the general two ascents over the Muur-Kapelmuur and the Bosberg ahead of the end in Ninove, making it one of the most more difficult routes of the Spring Classics.

The race has been a prestigious a part of the global calendar however simplest joined the Girls’s WorldTour in 2023. It was once a part of organisers Flanders Classics’ plan for ladies’s equality known as Remaining the Hole.

The organisation oversees six of the preferred Spring Classics: Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, Gent-Wevelgem, Dwars door Vlaanderen, Excursion of Flanders, Scheldeprijs and Brabantse Pijl.

The plan aimed to create equality throughout all six ladies’s and males’s Spring Classics in 3 major spaces: reside TV protection, classification at the global calendar and prize cash.

Jumbo-Visma have fun at Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne 2023 (Symbol credit score: Getty Pictures)

Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne is a well-liked one-day race that celebrates in 79th version in 2024, held from Kortrijk to Kuurne, and it serves as the second one race of the Opening Weekend in Belgium.

The course comprises climbs over Tiegemberg, Volkegemberg, Lepelstraat, Bossenaarstraat, Berg Ten Houte, Los angeles Houppe, Hameau des Papins, Le Bourliquet, Mont Saint Laurent, ahead of entering the past due race succession of the Kruisberg, Hotond, Côte du Trieu and one ultimate climb over the Kluisberg ahead of the run-in to the doorway of the end circuits in Kortrijk and the end line in Kuurne.

The development is yearly held the day after Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, with the primary winner, Belgian Henri Delmuylle, in 1946. Since then, Belgians have received nearly all of the editions of Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne, with Tom Boonen incomes a document 3 wins in 2007, 2009 and 2014.

The race isn’t a part of the WorldTour; as an alternative, it has sat at the Professional Collection calendar since 2019.

A normal view of the peloton competing all over the seventeenth Craywinckelhof Omloop van het Hageland (Symbol credit score: Getty Pictures)

Opening Weekend is a two-race display at the ladies’s calendar as neatly, starting on the top-tier Omloop Het Nieuwsblad Elite Girls, adopted via Omloop van het Hageland. 

Omloop van het Hageland is a 1.1-level race and begins in Aarschot with a end in Tielt-Winge. The race celebrates its nineteenth version in 2024. 

Ludivine Henrion received the inaugural version in 2005. The race was once held as a criterium previous to the 2011 version known as Tielt-Winge. 

Former champions additionally come with Emma Johansson, Lizzie Deignan, Jolien D’Hoore, Marta Bastianelli, Ellen van Dijk, and Lorena Wiebes.

Bastianelli has received the development a document 3 times in 2016, 2019, and 2022. The hot course comprises a number of massive circuits thru Tielt-Winge and hung on flat cobbled sectors at the side of repeat ascents of the Roeselberg.