eurotrash newest biking information headlines

Our Monday biking information spherical up, together with Christophe Laporte’s comeback win, a brand new sprinter on the block, late-season time trialing — and winners and losers within the UCI relegation saga. Plus a query for you readers — see beneath!

TOP STORY:

Laporte Makes Good on PEZ’ Prediction, Wins in Holland

RACE NEWS

Magnier Quintuples Up in Guangxi
Tarling, van Dijk Nab Chrono des Nations Victories
High Sprinters to Sq. off in Singapore

RIDER & TEAM NEWS

WorldTour Standing: Uno-X Mobility In, Cofidis Out
IPT Indicators Alessandro Pinarello (Sure, he’s associated to Pinarello’s founder.)

AND…A QUESTION FOR OUR READERS

Laporte Makes Good on PEZ’ Prediction, Wins in Holland

As we predicted in Thursday’s EuroTrash, Christophe Laporte (Visma | Lease-a-Bike) gained final week’s (trendy) inaugural Tour of Holland.

Our secret to selecting winners in late season, second-tier races? Scan the startlist for riders we’ve really heard of.

Snark apart, the race, re-emerging after a 21-year hiatus, featured some stable racing. However — alas — it additionally featured some clownshow-style, off-the-bike hiccups.

It started easily sufficient: A tidy 4 km prologue by way of The Hague. Ethan Hayter of Soudal–Fast-Step edged out a handful of GC hopefuls by 0.28 seconds — a blink sooner than anybody else and sufficient to put on the primary chief’s jersey of the resurrected race.

Stage 1 from Rotterdam to Dordrecht was textbook Dutch racing — slender roads, jittery nerves, and wind from each course. The bunch dash was inevitable, and Tim Merlier (Soudal Fast-Step) didn’t disappoint. He launched early, gambled huge, and gained cleanly. For a second, all of it appeared like a profitable reboot.

Stage 2, was a correct 14.8-km particular person time trial in Etten-Leur, and Hayter rolled again into the chief’s jersey with one other tidy effort. Nevertheless it grew to become clear that Laporte was lurking, ready; his podium spot within the time trial put him 19 seconds out of the general lead, with extra favorable stage profiles to come back.

Stage 3 — the notorious Limburg fiasco — will likely be remembered for all of the fallacious causes. A handful of automobiles breached course safety and entered the race mid-stage. The peloton stopped chilly, the commissaires panicked, and the day was in the end voided. A lot for the security plan.

By Stage 4, redemption arrived within the type of trustworthy racing. Up the VAM-Berg, native Continental rider Timo de Jong (VolkerWessels) out-kicked Laporte and half the WorldTour area to win in entrance of a delirious house crowd — the sort of victory that occurs when no person tells the underdog he’s not purported to win. However ending on the identical time because the winner vaulted Laporte into the lead, with a gravel patch — the place PEZ thought he would excel — nonetheless to come back in stage 5.

Once more: alas. There can be no gravel, because the race’s organizers decided that the chosen stretch can be too harmful. Dutch nationwide champ Danny Van Poppel (Pink Bull–Bora–Hansgrohe) launched a robust late transfer from the peloton and bridged throughout to a fading breakaway to grab the ultimate stage win. His daring assault secured a dream house victory—his first within the nationwide champion’s jersey—and denied the sprinters what had appeared a sure bunch end. Laporte, in the meantime, stayed shut sufficient to safeguard his lead.

After which there was the “seatpost state of affairs” — Jan-Willem van Schip’s midweek DQ after officers deemed his aero setup unlawful. Crew fines, finger-pointing, and a flood of memes adopted.

The decision? Chapeau to Laporte — and de Jong — however perhaps we depart properly sufficient alone and wrap the season up with Il Lombardia.

RACE NEWS

Magnier Quintuples Up in Guangxi

Whereas Britain’s Paul Double (Jayco-AlUla) took the general win, it was the Paul Magnier present on the 2025 Tour of Guangi. The Soudal Fast-Step rider gained 5 of the race’s six phases, — together with Sunday’s finale — to shut his 12 months with 19 victories, essentially the most by any rider not named Tadej. The 21-year-old dominated each bunch dash, clinching the factors classification and becoming a member of Fast-Step legends like Tom Boonen and Mark Cavendish in staff historical past.

Magnier on his solution to one among his 5 victories…

…and celebrating the win.

Nonetheless, as Magnier’s victories all got here in flat phases, taken by microseconds, it was Double, 29, who gained the GC in China, taking his first-ever World Tour triumph by warding off a fierce late assault from Victor Lafay (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) to safe the pink chief’s jersey by 15 seconds. The win capped a breakthrough season that reworked Double from a home stalwart right into a rising-status stage racer.

The general podium behind Double featured Lafay in second and Ecuador’s Jhonatan Narváez (UAE Crew Emirates-XRG) in third, reinforcing the latter’s consistency after opening 2025 with victory on the Tour Down Below. Double’s decisive transfer got here on Saturday’s queen stage to Nongla, the place he soloed to victory atop the three.1 km climb, taking the pink chief’s jersey.

Double arrives on the scene.

Within the girls’s one-day version, Britain’s Anna Henderson (Lidl-Trek) outsprinted Caroline Andersson (Jayco-AlUla) after a late two-rider breakaway close to Nanning, rounding off the season together with her second main win of the 12 months.

Is that this Italy? No — it’s China.

Tarling, van Dijk Nab Chrono des Nations Victories

One star rises as one other drops beneath the horizon: At this weekend’s Chrono des Nations time trial in Les Herbiers, France, 21 year-old specialist Joshua Tarling (INEOS Grenadiers) cemented his standing as a TT expertise, whereas Dutchwoman Ellen van Dijk (LIDL-Trek) topped an excellent profession with a last — if very slender — win.

Joshua Tarling gained the lads’s race — a correct time trial distance of almost 45 km — in 51:12, averaging 52.578 km/h. His benefit was constructed early — quickest on the first checkpoint and increasing it by the midway mark — and he held off Australia’s Jay Vine (UAE) who completed +30 seconds, whereas Swiss veteran Stefan Küng (Groupama–FDJ) claimed third at +1:15. The efficiency underlined Tarling’s clean pacing, whereas Vine’s silver continues a breakout TT season and Küng, three-time winner right here, confirmed robust kind although fell brief. With Filippo Ganna’s days as a challenger to Remco Evenepoel’s time trial dominance waning, it seems that Tarling would be the subsequent new time trial risk.

Tarling at this 12 months’s Giro

The ladies’s elite race (26.7 km) produced a extra emotional (and far nearer) finale as van Dijk used the occasion to finish her profession with a victory. She crossed the road in 35:57, beating Italy’s Alessia Vigilia by only one second, and Austria’s Christina Schweinberger by eleven. Van Dijk rode the course with clear focus and precision, delivering a becoming farewell to a stellar profession.

High Sprinters to Sq. off in Singapore

The street to the inexperienced jersey runs by way of Singapore! Tour de France sensation Jonathan Milan, winner of two phases and the 2025 factors classification, will headline the Tour de France EFGH Singapore Criterium, to be held November 2nd. Milan will face fellow stage winners Jasper Philipsen, Kaden Groves, Biniam Girmay, and Jordi Meeus. Retired legend Mark Cavendish, now a Tour ambassador, will likely be available to look at the sprinters’ showdown.

The race additionally reunites a number of riders who wore yellow this July, together with Philipsen, Mathieu van der Poel, and Ben Healy, earlier than Tadej Pogačar reclaimed it by way of Paris. Primož Roglič, runner-up in 2020, additionally joins the lineup.

Seven 2025 Tour stage winners are anticipated, amongst them Tim Wellens, Ben O’Connor, and Valentin Paret-Peintre. Nationwide champions Tim Wellens, Filippo Conca, Mauro Schmid, Madis Mihkels, and France’s Dorian Godon add extra coloration to what guarantees to be a quick, festive finale to the biking season.

RIDER & TEAM NEWS

WorldTour Standing: Uno-X Mobility In, Cofidis Out

On the eve of a renewed three-year cycle, the gears of professional biking’s inscrutable relegation and promotion system have floor out one other assortment of choice: Uno-X Mobility will likely be promoted to WorldTour ranks, whereas Cofidis has been slapped with ProTeam standing.

The WorldTour ranks embrace eighteen groups, however this cycle, the staff with the nineteenth most factors — Uno-X — will rise in standing, due to the Lotto/Intermarché-Wanty merger that may shrink these two groups right into a single tremendous(?) staff. The merger primarily elevates Lotto to WorldTour standing; a newly-named Israel-Premier Tech can even obtain a WorldTour designation subsequent 12 months.

Abrahamsen was key to Uno-X’s promotion.

This relegation cycle is proving to be a troublesome one for French groups: Together with Cofidis, Arkéa-B&B Accommodations can even descend, although seems more likely to disappear fully. Cofidis, a stalwart in professional biking, will nonetheless obtain a wild card in 2026; whereas not a WorldTour member per se, the staff will will obtain invites to WorldTour races, just like Tudor and Q36.5 in 2025.

Cofidis and Arkéa-B&B aren’t the one French groups with their destinies in play: Unibet Tietema Rockets ranked among the many high thirty groups, is is thus thought-about for a wild card for the Tour de France, as is TotalEnergies.

IPT Indicators Alessandro Pinarello (Sure, he’s associated to Pinarello’s founder.)

Photograph courtesy of Israel-Premier Tech.

Embattled staff Israel-Premier Tech has signed 22-year-old Alessandro Pinarello, the great-grandson of bicycle firm founder Giovanni Pinarello.

Alessandro joins from VF Group – Bardiani CSF – Faizanè, the place he steadily established himself as one among Italy’s brightest rising riders. Pinarello has proven promise in each stage and one-day races, together with two top-ten outcomes on house soil within the final month with fourth at Giro della Toscana, and sixth at Giro della Romagna.

“The factor that attracted me most concerning the staff was that it was rising and returning to the WorldTour and seeing the staff’s leads to the final years, I consider it’s a fantastic staff to experience for and one that may assist me develop,” says Pinarello.

After making his Grand Tour debut on the Giro d’Italia this 12 months, Pinarello has his sights set on lining up at biking’s greatest races, saying, “On a private observe, I wish to develop additional in stage races for the Basic Classification and to seek out new limits in one-day races. I might like to win a stage on the Giro d’Italia, however I even have my eye on racing La Flèche Wallonne and Liège-Bastogne-Liège, and, after all, the largest dream for any bike owner is to race the Tour de France.”

AND…A QUESTION FOR OUR READERS

PEZ’ self-styled tagline is What’s cool in street biking. Certainly, we work onerous to maintain it cool — and to maintain it street.

Mountain and gravel biking sneak in…largely when high roadies are competing: When Tom Pidcock strains up for a mountain bike race, or Matej Mohorič reveals up for Unbound, we cowl these races. Not a lot else.

However cyclocross inhabits an in-between world: lengthy utilized by northern-climate roadies to maintain in form in winter, ‘cross is each its personal world, and one occupied (and, frankly, dominated) by WorldTour street racers: There was Štybar, and Lars Increase, after which van der Poel, van Aert and Pidcock proved dominant in each disciplines — as did Lucinda Model and Puck Pieterse.

Our query, then: Ought to PEZ cowl ‘cross? Ship us your ideas at [email protected]. We’ll collect each remark, from “It’s all good” to “Positive — so long as MVDP’s within the race” to “If it ain’t tarmac (or pavé), PEZ ought to steer clear” — and canopy accordingly.

That certain ain’t street. Is it cool?