The curtain rises on European street racing this Saturday, with the early season program forming a five-week-long build-up all the best way to the primary WorldTour-level occasions for women and men on the continent, the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad in Belgium on March 1.
The depth of modern-day racing is such now that it appears onerous to imagine that there was as soon as a well-liked notion that these late January and February occasions had been merely ‘coaching with race numbers.’ But that idea is lengthy since useless and buried.
“Training is one thing you do at house,” Joxean Fernández Matxin, sports activities supervisor at UAE Team Emirates-XRG just lately informed Cyclingnews. “Whenever we race, it would not matter what degree the occasion, we race to win.”
Given that Matxin’s workforce had been essentially the most prolifically profitable of 2025, to not point out taking two out of three Grand Tours and two out of 5 Monuments, that’s clearly no mere boast. But if UAE will certainly be hitting the bottom operating once more this spring in Europe, their rivals should not far behind.
Furthermore, with relegation and promotion looming subsequent December, UCI factors at any time of the 2025 season are arguably extra coveted this 12 months than another within the WorldTour cycle. This arguably makes for each harder-fought competitions, and it actually makes for complicated strategic choices for groups – do they race the place most factors are on provide or the place they’re probably to get them? – proper from the phrase go.
There can also be the query of getting what Chris Boardman famously as soon as described as ‘insurance coverage’. By which the highest former UK racer meant that a number of comparatively minor wins within the bag early on make for a major drop in stress additional down the road.
The street calendar is already in full swing on the opposite facet of the world after all, on the Tour Down Under and Cadel Evans Great Ocean Races, and as soon as the Australian racing is over, at WorldTour degree, the Middle East will decide up the slack on the UAE Tours, deep into subsequent month.
But albeit at a decrease class – and far decrease temperatures on the market on the street, too – with regards to race curiosity, Europe is way from lagging behind. And, as a means of constructing anticipation for the primary physique of the street racing calendar later within the 12 months, too, the early season occasions of January and February on the Old Continent at all times have a significant contribution to make.
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Spain, Spain or…Spain to get the ball rolling
Both for the men and women’s elite, with regards to getting European street racing underway subsequent week, just one nation issues: Spain.
Within the Spanish borders, too, it is no coincidence that each one occasions subsequent week happen on the jap facet of the nation, too, the place the climate tends to be the warmest at the moment of 12 months. It’s additionally the place lots of the groups are nonetheless holding coaching camps.
First off on the ladies’s calendar are three one-day races held on consecutive days on the island of Mallorca, the Trofeo Marratxi-Felanitx (Saturday, January 25), the Trófeo Palma Femina (Sunday, January 26) and the Trofeo Binnisalem-Andratx (Monday, January 27). All ranked 1.1 and at 130 kilometres or much less, these ‘Challenge Mallorca Femenina’ races are a current addition to the calendar, beginning in 2024. They mirror the a lot longer-standing collection of back-to-back one-day races for the boys on the identical island, which begin later in the identical week.
Marratxi-Felanitx is a lumpy 129-kilometre run by the south of the island, with Mallorca-born Mavi Garcia, using for the Spanish National squad, and main Italian sprinter Chiara Consonni, on her new workforce Canyon-SRAM zondacrypto, two of the headline names. Palma Femina presents a a lot more durable profile, with two cat 3 climbs in a while and an uphill end on the citadel within the island capital. Binnisalem-Andratx ends the three-day collection with a brief however ferociously punchy trip by the mountains on the western facet of Mallorca, concluding with a steep cat.1 uphill end in Andratx Port.
Meanwhile, elite males’s racing opens up on the opposite facet of the Mediterranean within the easterly area of Valencia. Although the primary occasion on the Spanish calendar is the 1.2-ranked Camp de Morvedre one-day Classic on Friday, the primary time lots of the WorldTour peloton may be seen in motion in Europe shall be on the GP Castellón on Saturday, January 25.
Another comparatively current addition to the boys’s calendar, the 1.1-ranked one-day race within the northern facet of Valencia was created to advertise the area’s well-established cerámica [pottery] business, therefore its full title: Gran Premio Castellón-Ruta de la Cerámica.
A really hilly affair, too, that includes a 14-kilometre cat.3 climb, the Alto de Serratella, early on, and the brief however punchy cat.2 ascent up Col de Ayodar in direction of the finale, Castellón is as prone to be determined by a break as it’s by a small group dash. Last 12 months it was received by Michael Matthews (Jayco-AIUIa), who will as soon as once more be headlining the race begin record in 2025.
Hot on the heels of the GP Castellòn is the equally rugged Clàssica Communitat Valenciana 1969-Gran Premi València, one other 1.1 race which runs out of the regional capital and south by the mountains to the small city of La Nucia.
The space is well-known to many groups due to their coaching camps, and UAE Team Emirates, who used to have many winter camps in La Nucia, would be the greatest workforce on the beginning line at their second European occasion of 2025.
Alternating between flat finales like in 2024 and far hillier ones like in 2023 and 2025, it is onerous to foretell who will succeed Arnaud De Lie (Lotto) and Dylan Groenewegen (Jayco-AIUIa) because the final two winners. But Spanish National Champion Alex Aranburu (Cofidis), who’s proved his aptitude on such various, hilly terrain prior to now in his native Basque Country, may properly be in with a shout.
Five days in Mallorca
Is it a one-day race? Is it a stage race? No, it is the Challenge Mallorca. For years one of many first races in Europe, the Challenge has one of many oddest codecs, too, with as much as 5 one-day races held back-to-back on consecutive days.
But given the Challenge Ciclista Mallorca – to provide the races their full title – has been operating since 1992 for the elite males, it is clearly an efficient format, given it permits riders to drop out and in of various races, relying on their long-term objectives. And when the Challenge Mallorca Femenina started in 2024, the construction was the identical, too.
One key to success, too, is their selection. The opening Trofeo Calvia on Wednesday, January 29 is hilly whereas the Trofeo Ses Salines on January 30 is far flatter. Trofeo Serra Tramuntana on January 31 and Trofeo Andratx on February 1 take the riders into the mountainous northwesterly facet of the island, whereas the ultimate Trofeo Palma on Sunday, February 2 sees the riders conclude their island sojourn with a number of flat laps of the capital. Then after the just about inevitable bunch dash to shut out the Challenge, it is straight to the close by airport for a flight again to mainland Spain – or past.
France will get going
After over per week of completely racing in Spain, the final day of the Challenge Mallorca overlaps with the primary day of the biking calendar in France, on the one-day Grand Prix Cycliste la Marseillaise.
Running deep into the hills above the Mediterranean French port earlier than dropping all the way down to the coast for a end, Marseillaise’s palmares accommodates an intriguing mixture of Classics and time-trialling specialists, like final 12 months’s winner Kevin Geniets (Groupama-FDJ) and climbers comparable to Aurélien Paret-Peintre (Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale). One of the delights of early season racing is its unpredictability, in reality, and Marseillaise is a number one instance.
Three days later and only a few hours drive additional north, France celebrates its first stage race of the season, the longstanding Étoile de Bessèges – Tour du Gard. Won by Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) final 12 months, Bessèges tends to consist of 4 more and more onerous levels captured primarily (however not completely) by sprinters able to getting over the smaller climbs, earlier than a last brief time trial.
It is usually affected by the occasional spell of robust wintry climate situations, and historically Bessèges is a course which encompasses a fair proportion of flat, uncovered terrain, usually operating on technical, twisting nation backroads. As a end result, echelons and time bonuses on the mass begin levels could properly as soon as once more play their half in deciding the general winner – however usually it is the ultimate, last-day time trial which has the final phrase.
Valencia certain
If this 12 months’s version of the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana (February 5-9) and Vuelta CV Feminas (February 9) appear notably emotive affairs, do not be shocked. The tragic occasions of final autumn, which noticed a whole bunch of individuals perish within the worst mass flooding in Valencia’s fashionable historical past, will present a sombre backdrop to a area nonetheless battling to search out its toes, restore the immense injury induced, and are available to phrases with what occurred.
Few particulars have but to emerge, and the one-day Vuelta CV Feminas race route is as but unpublished and the beginning and end cities are virtually the one official knowledge accessible for the boys’s race. Logistically the organisers themselves had been amongst these badly hit by the flooding, with the race headquarters and materials all affected. But after some preliminary doubts, they lastly introduced the race would go forward.
What is understood to this point is that this 12 months’s Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana kicks off in Orihuela within the area’s deep south with an intriguingly lengthy 34-kilometre workforce time trial, adopted by two mountainous mid-race levels and a last run into the area’s capital on Sunday, February 9.
At least two of the later levels will run by areas most badly affected by the flooding, within the phrases of the Spanish sports activities every day MARCA “not simply to try to present a better [media] profile for what occurred, but in addition to supply these affected a small and non permanent technique of reduction from a state of affairs which stays extraordinarily delicate.”
The French custom continues
Back within the Nineteen Sixties and Nineteen Seventies, coaching camps in southern France for high Belgian and Dutch groups had been as frequent as they’re in southern Spain now for nearly all of the squads, and alongside them, a collection of one-day and stage races developed to provide the celebrities an opportunity to undergo their early season paces. Along with GP Marseillaise and the Étoile de Besseges, the Tour de la Provence (February 14-16), Classic Var (February 21) and the Tour des Alpes Maritimes et du Var (February 22-23) all proceed with that custom.
Perhaps as a result of it is the earliest, the Tour de la Provence has the best route, with a lumpy stage beginning within the regional capital, Marseille, opening up proceedings. Then stage 2 from Forlcalquier to Manosque is by far the toughest, taking in 2,335 metres of vertical climbing and a fearsome cat.1 ascent of Col de L’Aire Deimasco, halfway by the day. Stage 3 from Rognac to Arles is lengthy (197 kilometres) however way more simple, though crosswinds on the flat Camargue marshlands may but do some injury within the GC.
On the next weekend, the one-day Classic Var is just being held for the second time. In 2024, it break up off from the next two-day race, the Tour des Alpes Maritimes et du Var, the organisers taking a leaf out of the Challenge Mallorca playbook and holding two separate occasions to extend the potential for further publicity.
Regardless of the format, the components stays the identical as when Var and Alpes Maritimes had been all one race with a historical past stretching again to 1969 and a primary version received by Raymond Poulidor. While it’s a one-day race, Var has retained a typical stage 1 rolling course with a tough finale, whereas Alpes Maritimes sticks to having plenty of mountains together with the Col d’Eze – of Paris-Nice fame – and Col de Châteuneuf alongside the best way.
Full rosters are a good distance from being determined, however Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) is already slated for the marginally extra Classics-rider-friendly Tour de la Provence. Meanwhile within the Classic Var-Alpes Maritimes combo’, Classic defending champion Lenny Martinez (Bahrain Victorious) would be the huge draw for the native followers each on the one-day race on Friday, February 21 and over the next weekend, too.
Spain’s one-way ticket south
Curious however true: yearly Spain’s early season races run in a single unbroken clockwise arc, beginning on its jap seaboard in Mallorca and Valencia for the primary races in late January, then on southwards to the one-day Classics in Murcia and Alicante, after which lastly westwards, first for the Clásica Jaén after which the five-day Vuelta a Andalucia-Ruta del Sol.
The five-week trek south and east throughout Spain solely stops this 12 months on the ultimate stage of Andalucia on February 23, when it reaches the area’s most southerly metropolis of La Línea de la Concepción, with Morocco a scant 14 kilometres additional away throughout the Strait of Gibraltar.
The elite girls’s calendar follows an identical route, beginning in Mallorca and the one-day Vuelta CV Féminas in Valencia and persevering with in the identical area for the unwieldily named Setmana Ciclista Volta Femenina de la Comunitat Valenciana.
The first European-based stage race on the ladies’s calendar, the Setmana has been steadily rising up the classes because it started in 2016 as a 2.2 race, transferring as much as 2.1 in 2021 and a couple of.Pro in 2023. In 2025’s version from February 13-16, it retains a four-day format, and as soon as once more, too, boasts a formidable (albeit provisional for now) begin record, with each Marianne Vos (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Demi Vollering (FDJ-SUEZ) pencilled in to race.
Per week later the elite girls’s calendar follows the identical route of Spanish journey as the boys, with the Clasica de Almería within the nation’s most south-easterly area. Run by the identical organisation for the boys’s Clasica de Almerica because it started in 2023, Almeria has had way more rugged routes than the elite males’s race and it will be attention-grabbing to see if that tendency continues. It has a curious observe document of being received by only one squad so far, Cynisca, and by completely North American racers, too: Emilie Fortin of Canada took her one profession victory to this point in 2023 adopted by gravel star Lauren Stephens of the USA in 2024.
After Comunitat Valenciana, the elite males’s Spanish racing calendar continues with the Vuelta a la Región de Murcia on Saturday, February 15. As the title suggests it is a former stage race squeezed down over time to a single day. No matter: it is undulating course, usually concluding with a trek over the Cat.2 Collada de la Gallina climb earlier than bombing again down the very technical descent and into the close by metropolis capital, virtually invariably produces a few of the most fun racing of the early season: witness Ben O’Connor’s dramatic solo profitable assault final February, for instance.
The sprinters then come to the fore for the Clásica de Almeria on February 16 – a pleasing however normally considerably predictable run previous the countless seas of plastic greenhouses that dominate some components of the province – and that is adopted 24 hours later by one other race in jap Andalucia, the Clásica Jaén. As the primary race of the season usually to characteristic off-road sections, the ‘Classic of the Olive Groves’ has proved highly regarded with followers because it started in 2022, and Wout van Aert’s return there this 12 months can also be prone to be a significant draw.
After probably the most current additions to the Spanish street calendar, subsequent up is one among its most veteran occasions, the Vuelta a Andalucia-Ruta del Sol, which celebrates the centenary of its first version this 12 months. Reduced to a single five-kilometre time trial final 12 months due to farmer’s protests, this 12 months Andalucia is again to its full 5 levels – all of them very hilly, barring the ultimate Sunday’s flatter last run alongside the coast. Top members will embrace Enric Mas (Movistar), Marc Soler (UAE Team Emirates) and Tom Pidcock (Q36.5).
The Stars Gather In Portugal
Portugal’s long-term contribution to professional biking not often – and unfairly – will get the credit score it deserves amongst the worldwide media, however each February for per week a minimum of, the Volta ao Algarve and the newer addition of the Figueira Champions Classic do their finest to set the document straight.
This 12 months’s third version of the Figueira Classic could also be missing the celebrity presence of Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep), who kicked off his final season with a shocking trademark lengthy solo breakaway to victory. But its 2,200 metres of vertical climbing, culminating in a number of ascents of the brief, Ardennes-style, ascents of Rua Parque Forestal (1.3km at 7.8%) and Enforca Câes (0.8km at 7.3%), will certainly see some ferocious race motion nonetheless.
Julian Alaphilippe, using his first occasion for his Tudor workforce, tops the invoice in Portugal’s greatest one-day race, and the a number of World Champion shall be joined within the Volta ao Algarve (Feb 19-23) three days later by a bunch of different high names. In what is nearly actually set to be the strongest begin record of any European early-season race, Algarve may also play hosts to the 2025 debuts of Primož Roglič (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike), with João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates), Arnaud de Lie (Lotto), Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike), Geraint Thomas (Ineos Grenadiers) and Tao GeogheganHart (Lidl-Trek) all additionally current
Algarve historically reserves two days for the sprinters, levels 1 and three, nevertheless it additionally consists of an progressive ‘breakaway’ day on stage 4 and a summit end at Fóia on stage 2 – the area’s highest level. The huge novelty, although, is a 20-kilometre time trial on the final day up the race’s emblematic ascent, the Alto do Malhão, the place a worthy successor will emerge to three-time winner Remco Evenepoel.
The Historical Route
Born out of the roots of the long-absence Vuelta a Galicia, O Gran Camiño – The Historical Route strikes away from the normal stomping grounds for early season stage races in direction of the way more tough climbing challenges offered by Spain’s far north-west.
Extended from 4 days to 5 for the primary time in 2025, O Gran Camiño additionally has an unprecedented begin this 12 months in neighbouring Portugal. On paper, the important thing factors for the GC battle are the flat mid-race time trial in easterly Ourense on stage 3 and the hardest stage of the race by the mountains of Lugo on stage 4.
But on the treacherously lovely terrain that Galicia invariably presents, actually, something can occur at any level – and even on stage 5, with unpaved roads bringing the pack into the cathedral metropolis of Santiago de Compostela, the sparks may nonetheless fly. Only one factor is definite: after back-to-back victories for Jonas Vingegaard, this 12 months the race could have a brand new winner.