In this week’s episode of The Cycling Podcast, Daniel Friebe is joined by the veteran French journalist François Thomazeau and the Aussie former Classics maestro Mitch Docker to recap Opening Weekend - the Belgian double-header dominated, as per the predictions, by the Visma-Lease a Bike team. 

Wout Van Aert was the favourite for Saturday’s Omloop het Nieuwsblad and indeed looked to be zeroing in on victory until the peloton him down in the closing kilometres. It was left to Jan Tratnik to ‘save’ Visma-Lease a Bike and take the win…with Van Aert having to wait until the following day’s Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne to open his Classics account for 2024.

We discuss these and other notable performances from the two races, and also hear from Bahrain Victorious’s Fred Wright about what went…wrong for him at Omloop. Julian Alaphilippe, too, has had better weekends, and would have been hoping for a better response to his boss, Patrick Lefevere’s, recent criticism in the Belgian media. Nevertheless, we ask: what exactly was Lefevere playing at? 

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The Cycling Podcast was founded in 2013 by Richard Moore, Daniel Friebe and Lionel Birnie.