A Van der Poel against Goliath is predicted for the classics season

Just like last season ended, Visma-Lease a Bike has started showing overwhelming dominance, both in stage races, with Jonas Vingegaard dominating O Gran Camiño at will, and in the classics with an Opening Weekend that saw the dominance and victory of two riders from the Dutch team.

Can Mathieu van der Poel challenge the dominance of Visma-Lease a Bike?

As the major races of the season are just beginning, Visma-Lease a Bike has already won the psychological battle against rivals who are starting to feel overwhelmed by the dominance of the yellow team.

The Opening Weekend of the spring classics was particularly notable, with an Omloop Het Niewsblad where they controlled the race with multiple cards to play in the main group and, furthermore, knew how to execute a plan B when things got complicated in the final part; and the next day, breaking the race at the exact point they had chosen, setting everything up for a powerful Wout van Aert to win the Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne.

It is true that last year the classics season started in a similar way for the riders of what was then Jumbo-Visma, and yet, the dominance was not as overwhelming later on, not forgetting the Laporte/Van Aert double in Gent-Wevelgem or Wout's victory in E3 Saxo Classic against Pogacar and Van der Poel.

Precisely, this season Visma-Lease a Bike is even more focused on the classics with Wout van Aert's obsession to finally add a cobblestone monument to his palmares, if not both. All this with a team full of potential winners in this type of races, as demonstrated during the Omloop Het Niewsblad.

However, we will have to wait to see how the genius Mathieu van der Poel returns to the bike, after his tremendous cyclocross campaign, as only Van Aert was able to beat him in the Benidorm race, and he seems to have found the best form of his life this season as we saw in the mud.

Mathieu van der Poel faces the classics ready to repeat the tremendous spring he had in 2023, which led him to win two monuments: Milan-San Remo and Paris-Roubaix. Without neglecting the cobblestones, this season he has delayed his return until the Clasicissima with a clear intention to add Liege-Bastogne-Liege, one of the two monuments missing from his collection, and where he will likely have to face the climbers of Visma-Lease a Bike after having to battle against the classics specialists in the cobblestone races.

However, based on what we saw in the Opening Weekend, at present, he seems to be the only rider, considering the absence this season of Tadej Pogacar who will focus on the Giro-Tour double, capable of challenging Visma-Lease a Bike who directly scared everyone with their power.

In any case, making predictions is very easy, and then what actually happens on the road, especially when it comes to the classics where other factors beyond physical power come into play such as tactics, getting in the right breakaway, or simply the luck of not having mechanical issues. It is this uncertainty that not everything is written, even though the big names are almost always there competing, that makes these one-day races so exciting.