The second month of the 2025 cycling season is in the rearview mirror, with Tadej Pogačar, Jonas Vingegaard and Elisa Longo Borghini all winning big.
There were also sprinting showdowns, which featured controversial stage cancellations and relegations among other things.
Here’s our list of the peloton’s winners and losers from the past month.
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Winners
Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard
The first gauntlets of the season have been laid down by Tour de France favourites Pogačar and Vingegaard in a showing of early-season form that saw both of them take stage race victories in February. Pogačar won the two ‘mountain’ stages on Jebel Jais and Jebel Hafeet at the UAE Tour on the way to overall victory, while Vingegaard was similarly victorious at the first stage race he entered this year, the Volta ao Algarve.
Despite being sixth on GC after Stage 4, the Dane won the final stage individual time-trial by 11 seconds ahead of teammate Wout van Aert to leapfrog Pogačar’s teammate João Almeida (among others) in the standings.
Jonathan Milan and Tim Merlier
Lidl-Trek’s Jonathan Milan and Soudal-QuickStep’s Tim Merlier quickly marked themselves as the sprinters to beat at the UAE Tour.
Milan impressed by winning Stage 1 with its lengthy uphill kick and was successful again on Stage 4 ahead of Merlier and Jasper Philipsen.
Merlier also won twice, going back-to-back on a crash-marred Stage 5 before beating Milan and Philipsen on Stage 6.
Elisa Longo Borghini and Lorena Wiebes
So far, 2025 has been the year of Lorena Wiebes, with the Dutchwomen the fastest woman on two wheels right now having won all the sprint stages at the UAE Tour.
On Stage 1 to Dubai she edged out compatriots Charlotte Kool and Nienke Veenhoven of Picnic-PostNL and Visma-Lease a Bike respectively, while on Stage 2 to Al Mirfa she beat Human Powered Health's Lily Williams and UAE Team ADQ's Irish rider Lara Gillespie.
On the final day around Abu Dhabi, Wiebes saw off Sara Fiorin from Ceratizit Pro Cycling and Cofidis's Amalie Dideriksen for a third win, which unsurprisingly secured the overall points jersey too.
The UAE Tour Women’s general classification winner has always been the winner on Stage 3’s Jabel Hafeet climb, and so it was again, with Elisa Longo Borghini winning big for her new UAE Team ADQ squad. Her gap was large enough that none of her nearest challengers overall finished within two minutes of her, the closest being teammate Silvia Persico, who was second, 2min 06sec down.
Tom Pidcock
It continues to be a prosperous move to Q36.5 Pro Cycling for Tom Pidcock, who clinched his third stage win of the year on a hilly Stage 2 at the Vuelta a Andalucía. In a five-man sprint to the line in Torredelcampo, Pidcock prevailed against Brandon Rivera, Pavel Sivakov, Clément Berthet and Enric Mas. It pushed him up to third overall, where he would remain until the end of the race.
His success in Spain comes after he won two stages, the general classification and points classification at the AlUla Tour at the end of January.
Maxim Van Gils
It’s not easy being outnumbered – just ask Ian Stannard about the 2015 edition of Omloop Het Nieuwsblad.
Defending Vuelta a Andalucía champion Maxim van Gils took on the two UAE Team Emirates XRG riders of Tim Wellens and Sivakov on the first day of this year's race, a 162.6km stage from Torrox to Cueva de Nerja. Van Gils was sandwiched between the pair in the final kilometre and it was Wellens who jumped first, attacking around the final corner and drawing Van Gils with him. From there it was a short uphill kick to the line where Van Gils prevailed, his second stage victory at the race in two years after his time-trial win in 2024.
It's a strong start to life at Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe for the Belgian.
Ineos Grenadiers
After their least successful season to date in 2024, Ineos Grenadiers look to be bouncing back. It’s early days of course, but Michał Kwiatkowski won Clásica Jaén and Josh Tarling stormed to the win in the time-trial at the UAE Tour is certainly promising.
It looked to be a case of three wins in three days with Filippo Ganna having crossed the line first on the opening stage at the Volta ao Algarve, but as we’ll get onto shortly, it didn’t stay that way.
Losers
Volta ao Algarve organisers
On paper, Filippo Ganna is the biggest ‘loser’ in the fallout of the dramatic end to Stage 1 of the Volta ao Algarve, having been initially awarded the win only for the stage to then be cancelled and the results scrapped. But the real culprits were the race organisers, who have since accepted the blame for the chaos that marred the final moments of the stage.
After 189km of racing, the peloton steamed into the final kilometre of the day in Lagos. As the commissaire’s lead car pulled off at the roundabout to get out of the way of the impending sprint finish, almost the entirety of the field followed, which put them on the wrong side of a barrier lined with spectators as the race headed for the line. As a result, two sprints launched simultaneously on either side, with Ganna finding himself well clear of the small number of riders that hadn't gone astray at the roundabout.
It was a tough call for the win to be taken off Ganna, who was ultimately punished despite doing everything right. He said after the stage, ‘I know everyone went the wrong way, but I took the right corner. You need to know the parcours, you need to know the rules as riders.’
Adding salt into the wound, a statement from the Volta ao Algarve included a comment from race director Sérgio Sousa about how the stage was cancelled as ‘the sporting truth did not prevail in the end’, though they did accept their responsibility for not doing enough ‘to avoid the outcome’.
Visma-Lease a Bike’s sports director Arthur van Dongen described the incident as ‘unacceptable’, while Tudor Pro Cycling’s Marco Haller said it was ‘pretty ridiculous'.
Egan Bernal
It was a wild few days for Ineos Grenadiers, who experienced the highs of victories and the crushing blows of both a nullified win and another injury for Egan Bernal. After doubling up at the National Championships, Bernal found his good fortune short-lived after crashing at Clásica Jaén, a race ultimately won by his teammate Kwiatkowski.
Things appeared to be looking up for Bernal after his first win since the 2021 Giro d’Italia, and he was looking like one of the strongest riders in the race, but the crash left him with a broken collarbone.
Through a statement posted to Ineos Grenadiers’ website, he said, ‘I was really happy to start racing again in Europe, especially with my new Colombian jersey and also starting with a victory from [Kwiatkowski]… I’ve felt very good in the three races that I have done, so I just have to keep working and I hope to be back soon.’
Jasper Philipsen
While Milan and Merlier were running wild at the UAE Tour, Jasper Philipsen couldn’t get a single stage win despite five opportunities. He came close with a third place on Stage 4 and a second place on Stage 6, however he also notably blew up in the finale of Stage 1, unable to overhaul Milan on the lengthy finishing straight and then suffered the indignity of being relegated for his movement in doing so.
Eurosport viewers
As of 28th February Eurosport has officially closed in the UK. If you want to watch cycling, this is now behind a paywall at TNT Sports through a package that combines other sports with it for £30.99 a month (£371.88 a year). Or, if you are cancelling your subscription, there’s an offer to decrease this to around £15.50 a month for the first seven months (almost all of the cycling season).
It’s a staggering increase from a product that was once £6.99 a month on Discovery+ and the overwhelming response to this has been negative, with many planning to boycott.
Add this to the fact ITV will no longer have broadcasting rights to the Tour de France after 2025 and things are looking bleak.
- Read more: How to watch cycling for less in the UK
- Read more: Which countries can watch cycling for free in 2025
Netflix fans
In another blow for cycling coverage, Netflix is cancelling the Tour de France: Unchained docuseries. Its third and final season covering the 2024 Tour de France will be released this summer just prior to the 2025 Tour, which will not be filmed. It follows a disappointing reception to the series in France according to Le Parisien.
