Remember when…? 2025 season edition
All the ‘did that really just happen?’ moments from an odd sort of season
Sporting seasons are as inexorable as time itself, their cyclical flow a comfort in many ways, giving a recognisable shape to any given year (except you, 2020, we don’t talk about you). Of course, in pro cycling, the shape is probably a triskaidecagon (that’s 13-sided, for the non-geometrists among us), what with all its weird angles and distinct lack of cohesion. But, recognisable nonetheless, and much as it’s a comfort, it can also be a curse, if you’re expected to (or more often, compelled to, in my case) write about it in a regular fashion. It’s a sport which packs some months with hundreds of race days, while others boast just a handful, and still more that are mainly about hanging out on the Spanish coast and finding out what your new kit is going to look like. To expect oneself to be able to write an even amount of words or articles each month, under these conditions, is tantamount to impossible.
Wow, I really spend a lot of words saying ‘sorry I haven’t posted in a couple of weeks.’
My point remains though – as I opined in a previous piece, pro cycling, like many other sports, invites a front-loaded wedge of anticipation for the enthusiast – think about the over-emphasis placed on the early season French races, the tolerance of the UAE Tour despite its requisite dullness (not to mention ethical murkiness), the fervour for Opening Weekend, and the excitement that precedes the first Grand Tour of the year, the Giro d’Italia. Compare these if you will, with the tepid reactions to the Vuelta a España, Il Lombardia, and the stone wall of indifference that surrounds the Tour of Guangxi. Would that these races could be flipped with their early season counterparts, to see how perceptions of them might alter.
This rumination is relevant to what’s coming next, I promise.
I can’t remember what prompted me to begin this list, but as I was looking back over the season’s race results, I began to note down oddities that I remembered from some of the specific races, or stages thereof. Strange things that happened, memorable little diversions that are lost to all but those who were embroiled in them at the time. Wouldn’t it be great if a site like FirstCycling could include ‘miscellany’ as a category within its archives? Where you could click on a race, and discover that the breakaway went the wrong way at a roundabout and threw away their chance at victory, instead of seeing only the list of sprinters who fought for the win, in what on paper was a race for them anyway? It’s all the fun stuff that makes cycling such a weird, living breathing alien entity among its ‘normal’ compatriots. Yes, it’s fair to say that odd things happen from time to time in all sports – pigeons on the pitch, tennis players accidentally striking ball boys, Eric Cantona punching a fan – these are the quirks that stick in the memory, and live long in YouTube compilations. But in other sports, they are just that: quirks. The out of the ordinary, once in a blue moon events that can be gathered into short compilations, and are totally self-explanatory.
The ’quirks’ in pro cycling much of the time are as unintelligible to seasoned supporters as they would be to anyone stumbling across the sport for the first time. Things that just shouldn’t happen. Shouldn’t be ALLOWED to happen. Or things that simply occur as a by-product of a sport which takes place on public thoroughfares, using the world at large as its arena. However you dress it up, there is no other sport where a horse could join you for a bit of the race (women’s Strade Bianche, 2023), a group of riders could just hang around not knowing exactly where they’re supposed to go at a given moment (Tour de Romandie 2023 I think?) or Derek Gee could be pictured in multiple years riding alongside a man carrying a taxidermy fox (the Giro d’Italia).
Because of the aforementioned fatigue, I feel like I’ve already passed through the bit of the year where I can stomach ‘best race of the year’ type lists, in any great depth (they were in no particular order, Milano-Sanremo, Tro Bro Léon, Amstel Gold Race, Giro stages 9 and 20, and Tour de France stage 21 for the men; and Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, Liège–Bastogne–Liège, Giro stage 7, every stage that wasn’t a sprint stage of the Tour de France Femmes and the Worlds road race for the women).
Enough of all that though. Do you remember when all weird things happened? The interesting bits, the bits that made us laugh, or gasp, or exclaim to no-one in particular ‘er, what the actual fuck is happening?’ No? I’ve got you covered. Let’s REMEMBER STUFF!
(Note: some of this is just about the racing. Giro and Tour are not included because we’ve remembered enough about them already. And this is just my imperfect memory picking out the bits that stand out to me: your choices may vary - and please feel free to share in the comments!)
January
- Daniek Hengeveld takes her first pro victory, riding solo from the breakaway on the year’s first day of competition at the Tour Down Under. It felt like the world was watching, as the new season got underway with a plucky victory from the Picnic-PostNL rider, in a race that is always overly scrutinised as it’s first on the calendar
- Mountain bike cross country world champion Alan Hatherly impressed in his first outing as a road racer, going head to head with fellow off-roader Tom Pidcock at the AlUla Tour, also memorable for the wrong reasons, as Nils Eekhoff collided with a post in an nasty crash
- Classica Communitat Valencia 1969 – Christian Scaroni sets out his stall for an XDS-Astana team with one mission: to stay in the WorldTour. They would go on to have a storming early part of the season, racking up enough points to keep them safe from relegation
February
- Paul Seixas foreshadowed his rise to fame in 2025 with a spritely performance at the GP Marseillaise. The young Frenchman instigated a late move with a quartet of riders that nearly went all the way to the finish, proving his racing instincts and declaring his intent in his first pro season.
- The first in a number of safety issues that would trouble the sport in 2025, a number of teams withdrew from Étoile de Bessèges following incidents involving traffic being allowed onto the race route, causing an unsafe racing environment.
- Setmana Ciclista Valenciana saw the first head-to-head between Demi Vollering and her former sports director Anna van der Breggen, one of two veteran riders who had returned to the peloton for 2025. The two struck out early on stage 1 of the four stage race, but Vollering was able to move clear of van der Breggen to take the upper hand in the newly established rivalry. In a late plot twist, Marlen Reusser, now at her new team, Movistar, was able to bridge to van der Breggen to prove that she too would be a GC rider for Vollering to worry about in 2025.
- That never-ending uphill sprint on stage 1 of the UAE Tour, eventually won by Jonathan Milan, but it was so hard that the top 10 featured climbers and GC riders, including Oscar Onley in 5th, and Tadej Pogačar, who hadn’t been able to resist getting involved.
- Chaos at the finish of stage 1 of the Volta ao Algarve in Portugal, as most of the peloton went the wrong way heading for the finish line, ending up on the same side of the road as the crowd. Of the few riders who went the right way, Filippo Ganna won, crossing the actual finish line first, but the result was later annulled – JUSTICE FOR GANNA!
March
- The women’s peloton on their first Classics outing of the season at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad spend far too long watching each other and waiting for someone to take the initiative, and in doing so, spectacularly misjudge the amount of time and distance they have left to close down the breakaway, leading to a first pro win for Arkéa-B&B Hotels’ Lotte Claes.
- In the men’s race, Stefan Küng’s long, hopeful solo effort, which was ultimately closed down, leaving the stoic Swiss still without a Classics win to his name. Cue sadness.
- More riders going the wrong way at the finish at the Faun Ardèche Classic, where the lead group ends up split in two, and Romain Gregoire takes advantage in his home region, winning the race, while the rest were left to rue their mistakes.
- Mathieu van der Poel won his first race day of the season, at Le Samyn – from a bunch sprint!
- Pauline Ferrand-Prévot proved she wasn’t just back to make up the numbers at Strade Bianche, instigating a late attack, then coming back from a late crash to finish third.
- The weather defined Paris-Nice; Stage 4 was neutralised for a portion of the route following snow causing icy conditions. Lenny Martinez won stage 5, and was asked by Matteo Jorgenson in his press conference ‘will you let me win on Sunday?’ He was dropped the next day in echelons, and then stage 7 was shortened due to more snow on Auron.
- Speaking of echelons, there were some at Tirreno-Adriatico too, driven by Filippo Ganna who looked like he was having the time of his life giving the rest of the peloton hell, then ending up going on to put in a surprisingly solid GC performance, finishing an impressive second overall.
- After years of saying it might happen, Tadej Pogačar really did attack on the Cipressa, at Milano-Sanremo.
- Tibor Del Grosso bonked a few hundred metres from the finish line at stage 1 of the Volta Catalunya, allowing an in-form Matthew Brennan to storm to an impressive first WorldTour victory, a true statement of intent from the break-out Brit in 2025.
April
- Neilson Powless played it cool among a group of four, three of whom were Visma riders, to beat Wout van Aert to the line in a thrilling edition of Dwars Door Vlaanderen.
- More directional chaos, this time at Itzulia, where Alex Aranburu (riding his last race of the season…) was awarded the victory, despite cutting out a small portion of the course having taken the wrong turn at a roundabout (justice for Ganna!)
- Puck Pieterse dug deep to deliver her first and only victory of the season on the Mur de Huy at La Fleche Wallonne.
- Amstel Gold Race: the day that gave the peloton hope. Tadej Pogačar was beaten fair and square, with Mattias Skjelmose overturning both the Slovenian and Remco Evenepoel to take an incredible and surprising victory.
May
- While everyone else was busy watching the Giro d’Italia, all the cool kids (!) were tuned into Tro Bro Léon. Or at least, we were trying to tune in, as relentless rain rendered the broadcast almost unwatchable at times, with large portions of the race missing due to no signal from the host broadcaster. It made the mad gravel dash across Bretagne all the more entertaining, trying to piece together who was where as the likes of Kévin Vauquelin and Valentin Madouas chased along the soaked ribinou, while at the front of the race, Bastien Tronchon put in one of the most incredible rides of the 2025 season, bouncing back from a crash, a puncture and a wrong turn to take the win.
June
- Jonas Vingegaard kicks off the first of the attacks at the Criterium du Dauphine, prompting everyone to question ‘who are you, and what have you done with the real Jonas?!’
August
- Clemence Latimier (Arkéa-B&B Hotels) bursts into tears of joy upon discovering that she has been named the day’s most combative rider at the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, and will therefore be heading to her first Tour podium.
- David Gaudu jumped ahead of Danes (and unlikely sparring partners) Mads Pedersen and Jonas Vingegaard to snatch an unexpected victory on the uphill finish on stage 3 of La Vuelta España, taking the red jersey in the process ( yes I know I’m not supposed to mention Grand Tours, but the Vuelta is always overlooked).
Yes there were other months. Yes other things happened. But it’s time to lay 2025 to rest for now. Thanks for reading, and do consider sharing this Substack with your cycling pals, if you feel inclined.
Up next: the UNDER THE RADAR newsletter will be looking ahead to 2026, beginning with the riders we’re most looking forward to making a comeback. Join one of the paid subscription tiers to access this newsletter, along with all my archived posts, and start threads in the chat, which is truly a lovely place to be!
Some nice memories there, I saw a lot of the races you mentioned. I was also unhappy at the treatment of Ganna at the time.
Honestly think the repeated navigation fails this season say more about race organization than people realize. When pros keep taking wrong turns at Algarve, Ardeche, and Itzulia, its not rider error anymore but infrastructure gaps. The Ganna annulment at Algarve was brutal tho, he literally crossed the finish line first but got penalized for organizers not properly barricading the route.