Cyclist
Five new things in pro cycling for 2025
2025 is here and there are only a couple of weeks to go before the WorldTour kicks off with the Tour Down Under.
While you count down the hours, here are a few new things to look forward to in the coming season.
1. Women’s Milan-San Remo
It has been 20 years since women raced Milan-San Remo. After a short-lived appearance between 1999 and 2005, the race makes its long-awaited return and is pencilled in for 22nd March – the same day as the 116th men’s edition.
Route details are still to be confirmed. The men’s race is typically the longest one-day event of the year at around 300km. The maximum distance for the Women’s WorldTour is set at 160km, although exceptions have been made to go over this.
Trixi Worrack won the last edition in 2005 when the race was called Primavera Rosa. The return of Milan-San Remo means the women now race four Monuments in comparison to the men’s five – Il Lombardia being the only one now to not have an equivalent. It would be nice to complete the set, but the women’s calendar shouldn’t need to be a direct copy of the men’s.
2. The return of Anna van der Breggen
Returns are causing quite the stir for 2025. Anna van der Breggen retired in 2021 as a legend of the sport, having won almost everything there is to win, including World Championship titles, an Olympic gold medal, seven consecutive editions of La Flèche Wallonne. She also became the first ‘Queen of the Ardennes’ in 2017 having won the Amstel Gold Race, La Flèche Wallonne and Liège-Bastogne-Liège in the same season. The list goes on.
After stepping off the bike while riding for SD Worx-Protime, Van der Breggen moved into a directeur sportif role for the squad and has helped with the development of the likes of Demi Vollering and Lotte Kopecky. Which raises the questions: how much did she learn alongside them? Can she use this to her advantage? Where will she slot into the peloton? Will she win again?
Van der Breggen, now 34, says, ‘I am excited to come back. To suffer on the bike again and to race with the team again. I realise now how much I love the game, the sport and the competition.
‘Do I still want to be a winner? Of course I feel competition in me. I always want to win. However, that doesn’t mean you always can win. That’s fine too, because that only makes the victories you have more beautiful. When you have to struggle to get somewhere, it just makes the rewards later more beautiful.’
3. The Copenhagen Sprint joins the WorldTour calendar
A new one-day WorldTour race for both men and women makes its debut in 2025. Called the Copenhagen Sprint, it is scheduled for 21st and 22nd June, which are also the last two days of the Tour de Suisse.
On 21st June, the 160km women’s race will leave Roskilde in Denmark and head for three laps of a 10km circuit in Copenhagen. The men’s race follows the next day and covers 230km from Roskilde, ending with five laps on the circuit.
The route heads north to Frederikssund and through Hillerød. It’s here the two routes deviate, the men covering their extra kilometres with a loop out towards Humlebæk before rejoining the same course. It’s then down to Ballerup, where the Track Cycling World Championships were held last October, before heading into Copenhagen from the west for the finishing laps.
4. New teams for big names
Plenty of big names have joined new teams for the new year. Leading the way is Demi Vollering, who departed SD Worx-Protime for FDJ-Suez. She joins Elise Chabbey and Juliette Labous, giving the French team a strong lineup when it comes to targeting the Tour de France Femmes.
It’ll be strange not seeing Elisa Longo Borghini race for Lidl-Trek. The Italian national champion is now at UAE Team ADQ, coming off a year that saw her dominate the Giro d’Italia Women, where she led the entire way through the eight-stage race to win the maglia rosa.
Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig has joined Canyon-SRAM, while Niamh Fisher-Black and Marlen Reusser have joined Vollering in departing SD Worx, for Lidl-Trek and Movistar respectively.
Simon Yates is now at Visma-Lease a Bike, setting up a twin superdomestique showdown at Grand Tours, with brother Adam still at UAE Team Emirates XRG. The Yates-shaped hole at Jayco-AlUla will be filled by in-form Aussie Ben O’Connor, while Tudor Pro Cycling aim for the WorldTour with Julian Alaphilippe and Marc Hirschi joining their roster. After plenty of speculation, Ineos Grenadiers have lost Tom Pidcock to ProTeam Q36.5 Pro Cycling.
5. Campagnolo is back in the WorldTour
One of cycling’s grandest marques, Campagnolo, is back in the WorldTour after a brief one-year period in which no top level squad raced with their groupsets or wheels. After its partnership with Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale ended in 2023, the Italian brand was unrepresented in the WorldTour last year, but now a four-year deal with Cofidis means it’s back where it belongs.
Cofidis’s men and women will race on Look 795 Blade RS road bikes and 796 Monoblade RS time-trial bikes, both packing the Campagnolo Super Record Wireless groupsets.
Need more new things? How about the buzziest first-year pros to watch for in 2025
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