Omloop der Kempen exposed an uncomfortable truth in women’s cycling

The women’s Simac Omloop der Kempen is a UCI 1.1 race and one of only three women’s .1 races left in the Netherlands. Three, in a country that still presents itself as one of the leading nations in women’s cycling. That number alone should already raise serious questions.

Yet all three Dutch Women’s WorldTour teams were absent as trade teams: Team SD Worx–Protime, Team Visma | Lease a Bike and Team Picnic PostNL.

That absence becomes even harder to understand when you look at the broader context. Visma was not racing anywhere else that weekend either. Meanwhile, teams operating on significantly smaller budgets, such as Fenix-Premier Tech, managed to spread themselves across three different races simultaneously.

Maybe that means more than people realise.

Because what happened inside the race itself almost felt symbolic. Two riders went clear after only 35 kilometres, in what was already a relatively controlled opening phase, and were allowed nearly four minutes. The peloton looked almost exclusively toward the Dutch national selection to manage the race, because everyone knew where the responsibility sat with Lorena Wiebes and several other elite sprinters present.

The breakaway was only caught inside the final kilometres before the expected sprint finish.

Honestly, it felt like more than race dynamics. It felt like a reflection of where women’s cycling currently stands.

Afterwards, it became increasingly clear that the organisation behind the women’s race is struggling to secure enough sponsorship to keep the event financially healthy, or even organised at all. The men’s edition, run the following day, apparently does not face those same difficulties. For the women’s race, companies still seem far more willing to invest when the biggest names are present. That made the national team’s presence, with Wiebes, vital.

And that is the uncomfortable reality inside the current discussion around equality in cycling.

Equality cannot stop at visibility at the top level. It also has to mean protecting the races underneath it.

If races at this level disappear, development opportunities disappear with them. Not every rider develops in the mountains of a WorldTour stage race. Flat .1 races like Omloop der Kempen are where young riders learn positioning, teamwork, peloton awareness, race management and tactical responsibility. They are essential stepping stones within the sport’s structure.

That is why this conversation matters far beyond one Dutch race.

If even a country with the history, infrastructure and reputation of the Netherlands struggles to maintain and support these races properly, what does that say about the long-term health of women’s cycling elsewhere?

Right now, the model increasingly depends on a handful of star riders to justify investment, attention and sponsorship. But that creates a dangerous cycle: the lower levels need visibility to survive, while the biggest teams are often absent from the very races that sustain the pathway beneath the WorldTour.

At some point, cycling has to ask what responsibility the biggest teams have toward the calendar that helped build the sport in the first place.

In France, for example, there is far stronger cultural and structural pressure for nationally licensed teams to support the domestic calendar. Not as punishment, but as recognition that a healthy national scene benefits the entire sport, including the top level.

You cannot keep talking about development while simultaneously removing development opportunities.

Perhaps that is the real conversation this race exposed. Not whether the big names should have been there, but why the survival of women’s races still depends on them so heavily in the first place.