Your semiweekly cycling news summary, including Christophe Laporte’s comeback win, a new sprinter on the block, late-season time trialing — and winners and losers in the UCI relegation saga. Plus a question for our readers — see below!
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
- Top Sprinters to Square off in Singapore
RIDER & TEAM NEWS
- WorldTour Status: Uno-X Mobility In, Cofidis Out
- IPT Signs Alessandro Pinarello (Yes, he’s related 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) won last week’s (modern) inaugural Tour of Holland.
Our secret to picking winners in late season, second-tier races? Scan the startlist for riders we’ve actually heard of.
Snark aside, the race, re-emerging after a 21-year hiatus, featured some solid racing. But — alas — it also featured some clownshow-style, off-the-bike hiccups.
It began smoothly enough: A tidy 4 km prologue through The Hague. Ethan Hayter of Soudal–Quick-Step edged out a handful of GC hopefuls by 0.28 seconds — a blink faster than anyone else and enough to wear the first leader’s jersey of the resurrected race.
Stage 1 from Rotterdam to Dordrecht was textbook Dutch racing — narrow roads, jittery nerves, and wind from every direction. The bunch sprint was inevitable, and Tim Merlier (Soudal Quick-Step) didn’t disappoint. He launched early, gambled big, and won cleanly. For a moment, it all looked like a successful reboot.
Stage 2, was a proper 14.8-km individual time trial in Etten-Leur, and Hayter rolled back into the leader’s jersey with another tidy effort. But it became clear that Laporte was lurking, waiting; his podium spot in the time trial put him 19 seconds out of the overall lead, with more favorable stage profiles to come.
Stage 3 — the infamous Limburg fiasco — will be remembered for all the wrong reasons. A handful of cars breached course security and entered the race mid-stage. The peloton stopped cold, the commissaires panicked, and the day was ultimately voided. So much for the safety plan.
By Stage 4, redemption arrived in the form of honest racing. Up the VAM-Berg, local Continental rider Timo de Jong (VolkerWessels) out-kicked Laporte and half the WorldTour field to win in front of a delirious home crowd — the kind of victory that happens when nobody tells the underdog he’s not supposed to win. But finishing on the same time as the winner vaulted Laporte into the lead, with a gravel patch — where PEZ thought he would excel — still to come in stage 5.
Again: alas. There would be no gravel, as the race’s organizers determined that the selected stretch would be too dangerous. Dutch national champ Danny Van Poppel (Red Bull–Bora–Hansgrohe) launched a powerful late move from the peloton and bridged across to a fading breakaway to seize the final stage win. His daring attack secured a dream home victory—his first in the national champion’s jersey—and denied the sprinters what had seemed a certain bunch finish. Laporte, meanwhile, stayed close enough to safeguard his lead.
And then there was the “seatpost situation” — Jan-Willem van Schip’s midweek DQ after officials deemed his aero setup illegal. Team fines, finger-pointing, and a flood of memes followed.
The verdict? Chapeau to Laporte — and de Jong — but maybe we leave well enough alone and wrap the season up with Il Lombardia.
RACE NEWS
Magnier Quintuples Up in Guangxi
While Britain’s Paul Double (Jayco-AlUla) took the overall win, it was the Paul Magnier show at the 2025 Tour of Guangi. The Soudal Quick-Step rider won five of the race’s six stages, — including Sunday’s finale — to close his year with 19 victories, the most by any rider not named Tadej. The 21-year-old dominated every bunch sprint, clinching the points classification and joining Quick-Step legends like Tom Boonen and Mark Cavendish in team history.
Magnier on his way to one of his five victories…
…and celebrating the win.
However, as Magnier’s victories all came in flat stages, taken by microseconds, it was Double, 29, who won the GC in China, taking his first-ever World Tour triumph by fending off a fierce late attack from Victor Lafay (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) to secure the red leader’s jersey by 15 seconds. The win capped a breakthrough season that transformed Double from a domestic stalwart into a rising-status stage racer.
The overall podium behind Double featured Lafay in second and Ecuador’s Jhonatan Narváez (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) in third, reinforcing the latter’s consistency after opening 2025 with victory at the Tour Down Under. Double’s decisive move came on Saturday’s queen stage to Nongla, where he soloed to victory atop the 3.1 km climb, taking the red leader’s jersey.
Double arrives on the scene.
In the women’s one-day edition, Britain’s Anna Henderson (Lidl-Trek) outsprinted Caroline Andersson (Jayco-AlUla) after a late two-rider breakaway near Nanning, rounding off the season with her second major win of the year.
Is this Italy? No — it’s China.
Tarling, van Dijk Nab Chrono des Nations Victories
One star rises as another drops below 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 status as a TT talent, while Dutchwoman Ellen van Dijk (LIDL-Trek) crowned a brilliant career with a final — if very narrow — win.
Joshua Tarling won the men’s race — a proper time trial distance of nearly 45 km — in 51:12, averaging 52.578 km/h. His advantage was built early — fastest at the first checkpoint and extending it by the halfway mark — and he held off Australia’s Jay Vine (UAE) who finished +30 seconds, while Swiss veteran Stefan Küng (Groupama–FDJ) claimed third at +1:15. The performance underlined Tarling’s smooth pacing, while Vine’s silver continues a breakout TT season and Küng, three-time winner here, showed strong form though fell short. With Filippo Ganna’s days as a challenger to Remco Evenepoel’s time trial dominance waning, it appears that Tarling may be the next new time trial threat.
Tarling at this year’s Giro
The women’s elite race (26.7 km) produced a more emotional (and much closer) finale as van Dijk used the event to end her career with a victory. She crossed the line in 35:57, beating Italy’s Alessia Vigilia by just one second, and Austria’s Christina Schweinberger by eleven. Van Dijk rode the course with clear focus and precision, delivering a fitting farewell to a stellar career.
Top Sprinters to Square off in Singapore
The road to the green jersey runs through Singapore! Tour de France sensation Jonathan Milan, winner of two stages and the 2025 points 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 be on hand to watch the sprinters’ showdown.
The race also reunites several riders who wore yellow this July, including Philipsen, Mathieu van der Poel, and Ben Healy, before Tadej Pogačar reclaimed it through Paris. Primož Roglič, runner-up in 2020, also joins the lineup.
Seven 2025 Tour stage winners are expected, among them Tim Wellens, Ben O’Connor, and Valentin Paret-Peintre. National champions Tim Wellens, Filippo Conca, Mauro Schmid, Madis Mihkels, and France’s Dorian Godon add more color to what promises to be a fast, festive finale to the cycling season.
RIDER & TEAM NEWS
WorldTour Status: Uno-X Mobility In, Cofidis Out
On the eve of a renewed three-year cycle, the gears of pro cycling’s inscrutable relegation and promotion system have ground out another collection of decision: Uno-X Mobility will be promoted to WorldTour ranks, while Cofidis has been slapped with ProTeam status.
The WorldTour ranks include eighteen teams, but this cycle, the team with the nineteenth most points — Uno-X — will rise in status, thanks to the Lotto/Intermarché-Wanty merger that will shrink those two teams into a single super(?) team. The merger essentially elevates Lotto to WorldTour status; a newly-named Israel-Premier Tech will also receive a WorldTour designation next year.
Abrahamsen was key to Uno-X’s promotion.
This relegation cycle is proving to be a difficult one for French teams: Along with Cofidis, Arkéa-B&B Hotels will also descend, though appears likely to disappear entirely. Cofidis, a stalwart in pro cycling, will still receive a wild card in 2026; while not a WorldTour member per se, the team will will receive invitations to WorldTour races, similar to Tudor and Q36.5 in 2025.
Cofidis and Arkéa-B&B aren’t the only French teams with their destinies in play: Unibet Tietema Rockets ranked among the top thirty teams, is is thus considered for a wild card for the Tour de France, as is TotalEnergies.
IPT Signs Alessandro Pinarello (Yes, he’s related to Pinarello’s founder.)
Photo courtesy of Israel-Premier Tech.
Embattled team Israel-Premier Tech has signed 22-year-old Alessandro Pinarello, the great-grandson of bicycle company founder Giovanni Pinarello.
Alessandro joins from VF Group – Bardiani CSF – Faizanè, where he steadily established himself as one of Italy’s brightest emerging riders. Pinarello has shown promise in both stage and one-day races, including two top-ten results on home soil in the last month with fourth at Giro della Toscana, and sixth at Giro della Romagna.
“The thing that attracted me most about the team was that it was growing and returning to the WorldTour and seeing the team’s results in the last years, I believe it’s a great team to ride for and one that will help me grow,” says Pinarello.
After making his Grand Tour debut at the Giro d’Italia this year, Pinarello has his sights set on lining up at cycling’s biggest races, saying, “On a personal note, I want to develop further in stage races for the General Classification and to find new limits in one-day races. I would love to win a stage at the Giro d’Italia, but I also have my eye on racing La Flèche Wallonne and Liège-Bastogne-Liège, and, of course, the biggest dream for any cyclist is to race the Tour de France.”
AND…A QUESTION FOR OUR READERS
PEZ’ self-styled tagline is What’s cool in road cycling. Indeed, we work hard to keep it cool — and to keep it road.
Mountain and gravel biking sneak in…mostly when top roadies are competing: When Tom Pidcock lines up for a mountain bike race, or Matej Mohorič shows up for Unbound, we cover those races. Not much else.
But cyclocross inhabits an in-between world: long used by northern-climate roadies to keep in shape in winter, ‘cross is both its own world, and one occupied (and, frankly, dominated) by WorldTour road racers: There was Štybar, and Lars Boom, and then van der Poel, van Aert and Pidcock proved dominant in both disciplines — as did Lucinda Brand and Puck Pieterse.
Our question, then: Should PEZ cover ‘cross? Send us your thoughts at Content@PezCyclingNews.com. We’ll gather every comment, from “It’s all good” to “Sure — as long as MVDP’s in the race” to “If it ain’t tarmac (or pavé), PEZ should steer clear” — and cover accordingly.
That sure ain’t road. Is it cool?
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