Opening Weekend is comprised of two races. First up is Omloop Het Niewsblad, a lumpy, rough-and-tumble race, from which we've already put together our first mega tech gallery. The start is frenetic, but well organised, with teams cordoned off from the fans with plenty of space for both the teams and jobbing journos to move around.
Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne is a different beast entirely. There is no start venue, so teams park buses in car parks, beside ancient bridges, and on the banks of the river Leie. There's often only a bike length from the door of the bus to the clamouring fans, which certainly makes it a little harder to get information out of mechanics.
The crowds typically swarm around the big teams, and the arrival of the Visma-Lease a Bike bus saw a mass movement of bodies more akin to a shoal of fish than humans. On the flip side, it meant things were easier at the second-tier team buses. I was able to have an interesting chat with the Lotto-Dstny mechanic about Thomas de Gendt's random tyre blowout without having to use my elbows at all.
Sadly there is no women's Kurrne-Brussels-Kuurne, so all of the tech below is from the men's peloton. If you want the full experience, put on some '80s classic pop hits, as were being blared out by two wonderful DJs on a rickety, wheeled scaffold platform. I'm just glad it wasn't raining.
Considering the early start, and fatigue from the day before, this pair definitely got me in the mood.
Here's a closer look at what we believe is the new SRAM Red front derailleur. It's interesting that the team was only using this piece of the unreleased groupset; perhaps they are making totally sure it's free from any chain drop issues in these earlier, less important races. It does confirm backward compatiblity though, which is good.
30c tyres on unreleased Reserve wheels. The ERD (effective rim diameter) and offset notation that can be seen are there for wheelbuilders to determine the correct spoke length. The "20-2" I suspect is that sealant was last added on February 20.
Over at the Tudor Pro Cycling bus I got a closer look at the BMC Teammachine R of Petr Kelemen. The position is on the extreme end, but he's clearly a tall rider, and the bike is pretty well slammed.
The wide-set fork legs are still the most eye catching part of the bike
Riders seem to have their saddles slammed either all the way forward, or all the way back, with little regard for the marked limits on the rails.
Matteo Trentin was the only rider to opt for round bars and a separate stem, but I was told by the team that this was more because he prefers to use classic drops rather than more modern ergo shapes, and an integrated cockpit of this shape isn't available from BMC yet, though it is apparently in the works.
Trentin also opts for satellite sprint shifters peeking out from beneath his tape.
At Lotto Dstny, Victor Campanaerts bike is certainly more normal than it was last year, when he was running a 62t chainring, Classified hub, and 32mm tyres.
The language barrier was such that I wasn't able to totally ascertain Campanaerts' bar width, either a 38cm or 40cm, but the mechanics certainly made it clear that Vision doesn't make a bar narrower than a 40, at least publicly.
Always a user of big rings, Campanaerts was using a 56t big ring, a little larger than the 54t that most others were using.
The carbon cranks should shave a few grams off the overall bike weight.
Considering he's a rider known for being super-aero, it's curious to see Campnanaerts opting for 15mm of spacers.
While the team insists that the combination of a Zipp 303 rim and 28c tyre is safe, riders had 30mm rubber fitted for Kuurne.
There's not many sports where you can walk up to the biggest stars while they are prepping for an event and get them to record an intro for your podcast.
I didn't draw this, by the way. I'm way better at staying in the lines. Not perfect, but better.
There are often stalls selling bike merch, but this one was flogging used tyres and some ancient, very dilapidated Mavic Cosmic tubular wheels.
A new season often means new sponsors. If things are mostly unchanged, many teams simply opt to sticker over now-defunct partnerships.
At the Bingoal team, the De Rosa bikes were running a drivetrain of Rotor cranksets...
... and Ultegra rear derailleurs. It was nice to see something different from Dura-Ace and SRAM Red to be honest.
While most pit area cordons were respected, there was no stopping the Biniam Girmay fan club from getting a snap beside their rider's bike.
Usually the Belgians are the most fanatic, but the Eritrean ensemble were hard to beat at Kuurne.
With wireless gearing you can attach extra shifters more or less where you please.
While not every rider at Israel-Premier Tech was on the new Factor Ostro VAM, about half the squad at Kuurne had the latest machine.
The silhouette is certainly similar to the old machine, but I'm a bigger fan of the blue paint than the all-black guise of the 2023 team bikes.
At the Bora-Hansgrohe bus I got five minutes with Bob Jungels' bike. In a rare case of mechanic-journo trust I was simply handed the bike and allowed to wheel it where I wanted.
Jungels' bars look to me to be 40cm wide. The team is now running Hammerhead computers, which sometimes seem to not like sitting straight in the mounts.
As far as saddle positions go, his was relatively conservative.
On closer inspection, as well as using inner tubes, the former champion of Luxembourg was running 28c Turbo Cotton 'Hell of the North' tyres, a slightly more textured tread than the standard Turbo Cotton the team runs for the rest of the season, along with inner tubes.
Norwegian strongman Alexander Kristoff's bike, a Dare VSRu. It's the most angular bike in the pro peloton to my mind, TT bikes aside.
The hourglass shape of the head tube is rather pronounced.
Race number holders come in a variety of guses. Some use 3D printed clamps, some bonded on, here its held in place with a rubber O ring like a bike computer mount would be.
As the Dare's seatpost has a sliding clamp, gold marker pen has been used to get both the clamp and the rails in the correct position.
The Enve Melee of TotalEnergies certainly has a different silhouette to many of the other bikes in the bunch. The top tube is more heavily sloped, and the tube profiles are less extreme.
While all-black paint jobs are very common, the pop of colour on the downtube that you can't see from the side does elevate the visual package somewhat.
A security lanyard on a bike computer is something we rarely see in the pits.
Following last year's trend at the UAE Team Emirates pit, the team bikes were equipped with lighter rotors from Carbon-Ti.
More stickered-over sponsor decals. Arnaud Demare bucked the trend for running 30c tyres somewhat by sticking with 28c.
If it wasn't '80s hits in my ears, it was this combination of tuba and washboard.
After the race got underway the crowds thinned.
In the press room, a gaggle of photographers clamoured around Wout van Aert's winning Cérvelo S5.
Here's one of the new wheel again...
A 100psi maximum pressure makes me suspect it's hooked, like the rest of the Reserve road wheels.
A bayonet-style front end, and bars as low as they'll go to cheat the wind as much as possible.
Curiously for a team as meticulous as Visma-Lease a Bike in terms of optimising things, van Aert is using a 40cm bar. Cérvelo does make a 38cm option, which could well save a few watts, though I'm sure the team must have tested it.
That's a wrap, folks. Stay tuned for more behind the scenes action from the biggest races as the season progresses.
Is there anything we've missed? Let us know in the comments below, and stay tuned to Cyclingnews for all the race results, news and features from our team on the ground throughout the classics season.
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