{"id":218759,"date":"2025-10-22T21:22:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T21:22:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/218759\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T21:22:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T21:22:14","slug":"the-inner-ring-how-the-predictions-for-2025-fared","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/218759\/","title":{"rendered":"The Inner Ring | How the Predictions for 2025 Fared"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

As tempting as it can be to bury past predictions that soured it\u2019s healthy to revisit the piece from January<\/a> to see what the thinking was, what has happened since and try to learn from it.<\/p>\n

Who wins the Tour de France? Poga\u010dar won as predicted but the piece envisaged a very close contest between him and Jonas Vingegaard. A season later and this was wrong to the point of wondering how this even got written.<\/p>\n

But the thinking was each had won the Tour after the other sustained a heavy crash and things could be close if they weren\u2019t plagued by injuries in the build-up.\u00a0Also the view in January was that it would still be a two rider contest with nobody else troubling the pair. The proved true with Florian Lipowitz a revelation but racing Oscar Onley for third place.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The hypothesis of a close contest was tantalising, see the opening stage of the Dauphin\u00e9 with Poga\u010dar, Vingegaard and Van der Poel making moves in Montlu\u00e7on was a thrill, only for the world champion to eject Vingegaard on the Domancy climb before the Alpine racing really even started. The hope existed into the Tour itself with a thriller opening phase, until the race was settled in Hautacam.<\/p>\n

Star riders will race less
If you\u2019ve read the paragraphs above you might say \u201cbut Vingegaard did crash\u201d as he left Paris-Nice but he didn\u2019t race much elsewhere either in order to pick of his goals so he\u2019s an example and the idea was why race small events when the crash risk can be too risky. Team mate Wout van Aert did go back to Dwars Door Vlaanderen when he could have sat it out to be safe; only he and his team mates got mugged by Neilson Powless.<\/p>\n

This one is harder to quantify and might still be one for 2026, Poga\u010dar\u2019s race programme could look like 2025 but with fewer races still. We should see more \u201csubmarine\u201d race schedules with riders out of sight for long periods of time. It will also help on some teams that have congestion at the top, a chance to give others leadership.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The sprinting spoils will be shared
This held up. Take the Tour de France where Jonathan Milan took the points jersey, and two stage wins but only on days when Tim Merlier wasn\u2019t able the sprint, Jasper Philipsen won one before his early exit.<\/p>\n

Olav Kooij looked great at times but beatable too. Are sprint stages the new suspense, the days to make bloggers writing previews do their homework? It sets things up well for 2026 with Paul Magnier and Arnaud De Lie as fastmen but not pure sprinters. Matthew Brennan is interesting because at times he looked invincible, some how there were days you could see he was going to win with 90 seconds to go.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Women\u2019s races get a rising audience
While the Tour Femmes had been off to a great start and has cemented its position as the lead event TV audiences were shrinking. Some of this was down to the Olympics last year hogging audiences so what would happen in a year with clear run? Pauline Ferrand-Pr\u00e9v\u00f4t and Maeva Squiban certainly helped bring in a record domestic audience<\/a>. The international audience is hard to quantify as a block but there were increases in Belgium and the Netherlands and comments from sponsor Zwift suggest it improved beyond too.<\/p>\n

Arguably a big change for the long term was made with the women\u2019s Giro moving on on the calendar, it won\u2019t be held in July any more and so it won\u2019t be eclipsed by the Tour de France. We should see more women\u2019s races with established brands eclipsing men\u2019s races that don\u2019t have status.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

XDS-Astana get relegated
Wrong and then some. The idea was that a bunch of mercenaries recruited to grab points would not get along, they would be out for themselves at the expense of the team. This sounds more like Cofidis instead.<\/p>\n

The Kazakh team copied from Ark\u00e9a and Lotto before to chase points in smaller races and place riders in the top-10 rather than go all in to deliver a win, \u201cif you can\u2019t beat them, then score\u201d. But XDS-Astana didn\u2019t just score subtly, they had a great season: finishing fourth on the UCI rankings and ahead of Soudal-Quickstep and Red Bull; and fifth when ranked by wins too. Christian Scaroni was a revelation with 2,399 points and there was depth as their 20th rider Anton Kuzmin scored 208 points while Cofidis\u2019s Sergio Samitier had 68 (the relegation rankings counts the 20 best riders on each team).<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Ark\u00e9a-B&B Hotels get relegated too
Yes and as the piece said the real worry was the team was set to fold. As we could see last winter the team had lost some good riders because of budget issues, it was in trouble already and this made it hard to appeal to sponsors.<\/p>\n

K\u00e9vin Vaquelin had a great Tour de France but already he\u2019d signed with Ineos in April so any incoming sponsor if there was anyone interested would struggle to get him back. Still Vauquelin-mania gave the team a good ending. He\u2019s a promising rider to watch with a big talent that\u2019s often been sapped by self-doubt. The team might be missed but for now the place gets easily filled by teams on the up.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Tour wildcards are make-or-break
Back in January three teams in Tudor, Total Energies and Uno-X were jostling for two places at the Tour de France. Tudor looked compulsory in January already but if Total or Uno-X were left out this could be existential for them because if they could not get in this year it didn\u2019t look any easier next year and so their sponsorship could be doomed. The solution mentioned was to invite all three by waiving the rules and this duly happened.<\/p>\n

The rule change has become the norm with five teams from outside the World Tour. Tudor, Q36.5 and Cofidis qualify*<\/a> to race the Tour next year. Which leaves two wildcards. Paradoxically the situation looks very different. Total look obvious for an invite but the remaining place? Tietma Rockets probably but almost because there\u2019s nobody else given some Italian teams crave the Giro, likewise Spanish teams the Vuelta. Look to 2027 and what happens if Total doesn\u2019t find a replacement sponsor, then who is invited? There\u2019s a chance to get a foot in the door for a team able to assemble the right project.<\/p>\n

Safety remains a contentious topic, divisive even
There were times in the season when you could see some team managers quick to criticise race organisers but silent at other times because they have a beef with the organisers or even had a personal connection to the event.<\/p>\n

The nadir was surely the fiasco at the women\u2019s Tour of Romandie where some teams and the UCI could not agree about the trial of safety transponders and so there was a stand-off with teams refusing to fit the UCI\u2019s devices and the UCI applying the rule that disqualifies riders that don\u2019t fit an issued transponder. And behind this a squabble between some teams belonging to the Velon group and the UCI and rather than sitting down to find a solution for safety politics won.<\/p>\n

Yellow cards will prove controversial
This looked like it could erupt during the season but it was good to be wrong, we never saw a big name rider on a yellow card get issued a second during a major race and sent home. That doesn\u2019t mean it won\u2019t happen next season.<\/p>\n

The biggest fuss was probably over Bryan Coquard in the wake of Jasper Philipsen\u2019s crash out of the Tour de France. Did Coquard deserve a yellow card? Probably not, even pro-Philipsen Belgian TV pundits seemed to agree after they\u2019d cooled down \u2013 but in getting one this crystallised his apparent fault and he got roasted on social media and it got to him.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Calendar reform is finally unveiled
No sign of this. But while everyone likes the idea of reforming a jumbled calendar with confusing labels, the outcomes might not be what people want once you have to start scrapping races with local roots and it\u2019s not easy to magic a new race around a desert(ed) motorsport circuit into existence either.<\/p>\n

Adjacent to this was the One Cycling cycling whose launch could have prompted the change. The scheme kept pushing back a mooted launch date only to all but vanish from conversations even if it is still a work in progress.<\/p>\n

David Lappartient remains at the UCI
True and the prediction was he\u2019d have a hard time trying to become the IOC chief. While he\u2019s a politician, he\u2019s not an operator on the level required to glide into the top job at the Olympics, especially as he started as an outsider without the implicit backing of the exiting chief. It\u2019s back to cycling and he\u2019s left the French Olympic committee too. So more cycling? Possibly and calendar reform could be back on the agenda \u2013 there\u2019s a dossier on his desk about budget caps and other structural issues \u2013 but a recent tweet in praise of ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy on the eve of his incarceration for campaign fraud hints at eye still on French politics too, or possibly that\u2019s reading too much into it?<\/p>\n

Gigantic waterbottles
Meh, not really. With some riders using these in training so that they can carry enough energy drink for today\u2019s high carb racing<\/a> \u2013 you have to train like this as well as race \u2013 then they could race with bigger bidons. Only weight is still a live issue and so riders have relied on musettes from soigneurs and team mates to fetch supplies so they don\u2019t have to carry an extra 500 grams.<\/p>\n

Rider retirements
The prediction was some riders can make so much money from the sport these days that they just don\u2019t need to go on racing, the risks to their health become too much or they become fed up of life on the road away from family, mid-range hotels and weighing their food. This was wrong for 2025 although some riders stopping this year have surprisingly big real estate investments which probably eased the decision to turn down a renewal.<\/p>\n

As for the superstars it\u2019s probably something that\u2019s coming. Plenty of millionaires can live expensive lifestyles so many will want to keep on earning for as long as they can but structurally the sport can set up riders \u2013 mainly men for now \u2013 for life these days. This was still a topic in the year as the loudest voice for early retirement was surely Tadej Poga\u010dar who is increasingly invoking the end of his current contract as a date to leave the sport.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As tempting as it can be to bury past predictions that soured it\u2019s healthy to revisit the piece…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173842,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-218759","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218759\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}