Weekend Surprises; Betting Isn't Going to Save Sports Media; No "Plan B" For Rwanda Worlds Seems Dangerous; Broader Journalism Trends and Impact on Cycling; Dearth of American Road Racing ..

Key Takeaways:

● Surprises on Classics Opening Weekend

● Is Demi Vollering “Back?”

● Betting is Not Going to Save Sports Media

● The Risks of “No Plan B” For Rwanda Worlds

● Broader Journalism Trends: Impact on Cycling

● The Dearth of American Road Racing

The 2025 spring Classics season officially kicked off this past weekend, with the historic Saturday/Sunday double of Omloop Nieuwsblad and Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne welcoming the peloton back onto the cobbled roads of Flanders. On Saturday at Omloop, the second-division Uno-X team bagged the biggest win in their history, shocking the favorites when their sprinter Søren Wærenskjold, who – hulk-like at 6'4" tall and 202 pounds – made it over the tough Flandrian climbs like the Muur van Geraardsbergen late in the race to win the sprint finish over Soudal-Quickstep’s Paul Magnier and Alpecin–Deceuninck’s Jasper Philipsen. On Sunday at Kuurne, a more predictable order was at least somewhat restored, as Philipsen leveraged his strong Alpecin team to set up a perfectly executed sprint victory. However, even a victory from the team that won the first three Monuments last year couldn’t mask the weekend theme of “disruption.” Following Uno-X’s Saturday win at Omloop, three other second-division teams took three of the top five places on Sunday at Kuurne. In contrast, UAE Team Emirates-XRG and Visma Lease a Bike both appeared rather subdued in both races, with Visma’s Olav Kooij’s second place at Kuurne the only top ten finish from either of 2024’s top two teams (UAE’s top placing on the weekend was Rui Oliveira’s 30th at KBK). Despite UAE and Visma’s struggles over the weekend, the fact that Alpecin was able to control both races while walking away with two podiums and a victory – despite Mathieu van der Poel’s absence – should send shivers down the spine of every other team with aspirations of success throughout the spring one-day races.

On the women’s side of the spring classics opening weekend, Demi Vollering showed at the Omloop that she’s healthy and ready to prove that her muted 2024 campaign might have been a fluke. The race may have produced a surprising hometown winner in Lotte Claes (Arkea) from the all-day breakaway, but newly minted FDJ leader Vollering dominantly controlled the peloton over the Mur de Grammont and broke free of a stifling pack to take third place from the on-form Puck Pieterse (Fenix). Much like the men’s event, the women’s Omloop is a harbinger of form for the riders seeking springtime glory and the underwhelming performance of SD Worx – the most successful team in women’s cycling for the past few years, but with star sprinter Lorena Wiebes managing only fifth in the race – shows that the distribution of talent may bring them back down to earth as more rival teams take the initiative to play breakaway politics and blunt the efforts of Women’s WorldTour “super-teams” like SD Worx from controlling the outcomes. The upcoming “triptych” of Italian Women’s WorldTour events – Strade Bianche, Alfredo Binda, and Milan-SanRemo may confirm a new balance of power in women’s racing – or perhaps SD Worx is keeping its powder dry to help stars like Lotte Kopecky and Wiebes succeed in the coming weeks.

Sports betting was legalized across a large swath of the United States a few years ago and many in the sports media world wondered if the new market would give new life to long-struggling sports content businesses. And this appeared to be the case when ESPN signed a 10-year, $2 billion deal to license its name to sports betting giant Penn National to create the ESPN Bet app. However, just a few years into the deal, reality doesn’t appear to be keeping pace with the expectation; the current situation looks bad enough that Penn is rumored to be considering an opt-out clause in the deal next year. How bad? When Penn reported its fourth quarter 2024 and full-year earnings last week, the division that houses the ESPN BET app lost a staggering $110 million in the last quarter of 2024 alone. Additionally, despite their goal of having ESPN BET capture a 20% market share, the company estimates it currently controls less than three percent of the sports betting market. The challenges at Penn underscore an important paradox for sports publishers who were hoping that sports betting would help increase circulation as fans sought reliable betting information – unstable economic conditions and perhaps oversaturation in the betting marketplace has blunted bettor confidence. This inconvenient truth suggests that sports gambling is unlikely to be the white knight for sports publications that was once hoped.

Just over a week ago, UCI President David Lappartient’s boastful comments on the 2025 World Road Championships made the rounds in the cycling press and social media: there is no “plan B” to hold them anywhere but Rwanda. With all due respect to Mr. Lappartient’s political nose for navigating the politics of sport, the likelihood of a cease-fire taking place for a bicycle race during the ongoing military and humanitarian crisis – which has now fully engulfed the Kivu region of the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Rwandan border – is almost zero. The risk of violence cannot be ignored by the UCI: how will their riders and entourages be kept safe, and by who? With Rwandan President Paul Kagame attempting to project his power in the region in the face of his country’s economic limitations and oncoming international sanctions – and with the region cutting Rwanda off from significant commerce initiatives and staging troops on their borders – is the risk of racing in a developing war zone worth the reward for pro cycling? And, perhaps more to the point, without a plan B in hand, can pro road cycling survive a year without a World Championships?

We have reported recently on various trends in the broader media world which may translate into an effect on the small cycling media world, including the lack of access of teams and riders to the media, and how that may impact objective coverage in the future. The Nieman Lab’s recent annual review of trends also highlighted the likelihood of conflict between sports journalism and betting, with potentially negative impacts on sports integrity. Interestingly, the group also projected a return to – and a renaissance in – more traditional long-form journalism. With increasing attention to click-bait, quick sound bites, shorter attention spans and so on, one could argue that the media lost its focus; indeed, catering to these perceived audience priorities (and a few egregious failures to use AI-generated content along the way) may be some of the reasons that the media’s level of trust and respect has fallen so much over the past couple of decades. The lab suggests that some percentage of the audience saw through this, and implies that “Audiences crave deep, meaningful conversations that represent the broad, nuanced spectrum of who we are, what we think, and what we believe.” The answer, says Nieman, “is the very thing that we let die at the hands of the trendy listicle: longform.” While there are very few organizations producing good long form content in the cycling media marketplace today, there is certainly plenty of interest and demand for more. However, with the economic obstacles that we have highlighted in the past, as well as the aforementioned declining access challenges, it is hard to see how the broader trend may impact this sub-market.

It’s easy to forget that there is at least a minimal road racing calendar in North America when the majority of the sport takes place in Europe. However, a quick scan of USA Cycling’s events and local associations web pages shows that the smaller number of top races on offer – and the distances that one must travel between races – has put U.S. talent identification and development at a considerable disadvantage when compared to the total population of potential competitive riders across the States today. Just a year ago, three professional criterium series were vying for rider and team commitments and had the potential to reinvigorate the grassroots popularity and participation in the sport. But today, only one crit series remains (the USA Cycling Criterium National Series) and only five U.S. races now have a UCI sanction of any level: Tour of the Gila, Tour de Bloom, the National Championships, Gran Premio NYC, and the Maryland Classic. The fact that the U.S. boasts many top WorldTour men and women riders is nevertheless testament to the amazing talent which can be developed despite these circumstances.

While there are a handful of domestic road racing events going strong, the local and regional calendars are thin on long-form endurance racing and heavy on criteriums – particularly many tried and true local club series which often take place in industrial developments and city parks. But the local associations – which represent USA Cycling’s State and region-level racing oversight branches – often have calendars that are not always up to date. Some in the industry have begun to ponder whether the prolonged downturn in the sport’s retail sector is beginning to suppress growth in road racing, too, as much of the sport’s club culture has traditionally been centered on retail shop sponsorship and interaction – with fewer shops in today’s market reducing those community-building opportunities. It remains to be seen if the slight uptick in MTB racing and peaking popularity of gravel will lead to crossover participation in road events in the near future, but a better bet might be investments in velodromes and track programs, which can introduce cycling to younger riders in a controlled environment and which have a proven record for producing elite riders across the sport. Still, the options for a talented junior rider in the U.S. to develop into an elite professional have been polarizing in the modern era: introduced to racing at home but sharpened on competition in Europe – if you can afford the trip.