Renewi Tour Preview - Van der Poel the man to loosen UAE Team Emirates’ stage race grip?

It’s fair to say 2025 has been a good year for UAE Team Emirates-XRG. Though Visma | Lease a Bike might argue, the Emirati team have the deepest roster in the WorldTour and the proof is in the pudding.

Of the 12 WorldTour stage races so far this season UAE have won nine of them, with five different riders. From Jhonatan Narváez at the Tour Down Under in January through João Almeida’s wins at Itzulia, Romandie and Tour de Suisse to Brandon McNulty in Poland earlier this month, they’ve been almost unstoppable. And that’s without Tadej Pogačar’s Tour de France and two other GC wins. Starting on Wednesday it could be Tim Wellens’ turn to add to the team’s impressive tally of stage race wins by taking a fifth GC at the Renewi Tour. 

The Belgian champion is the event’s most successful rider, with four general classification wins already, including the last two editions. We know he’s in form after a stellar Tour de France where he won a stage helped Pogačar to a fourth yellow jersey. With such success at the event it’s clear it suits him, but he might not have it all his won way. 

The biggest fly in the ointment for Wellens and UAE is likely to come from a Belgian team with a Dutch superstar, in Mathieu van der Poel and his Alpecin-Deceuninck squad. Van der Poel has started the race twice before, failing to finish last year and winning the truncated 2020 race with an imperious stage win in Geraardsbergen.

Other than a criterium over the weekend, he’s not raced since abandoning the Tour de France after stage 16, suffering from pneumonia, so his form is unknown. However, if anyone can be successful after illness it’s Van der Poel, especially with the first two flat stages to ride himself in ahead of the final three days which suit him to the ground.

This has not been Arnaud de Lie’s (Lotto) greatest year, another of Belgium’s next big things, the 23-year-old already has 27 wins to his name, though none since January, his spring ending as a stop start affair. However, he looked on the up as the Tour de France wore on and knows the race well, winning the closing stage of last year’s race, beating Wellens in the process, and had he not lost so much time three minutes in the time trial he would been close to winning overall. 

Matej Mohorič is another former winner starting in Terneuzen on Wednesday, winning the final Geraardsbergen stage in 2021. The Bahrain Victorious rider should be ideally suited to a race like the Renewi Tour, but he’s another who’s been off-colour this year, struggling through the Tour de France where his best result was third on the punchy final stage in Paris. 

As has become usual in recent years, Lidl-Trek will start with an incredibly strong line up including Mathias Vacek and Thibaut Nys offering genuine GC threats. Vacek was a revelation that the Giro d’Italia this year where he showed he was just about able to deal with just about any terrain, and he’ll be buoyed by his recent long-term contract extension.

Nys is much more flamboyant in style, and though he’s had more success than his team mate, he’s not won since the GP Miguel Indurain, his first race of the year back in April. He seemed to be a little overwhelmed by his recent ride at the Tour de France, but the very strength of the squad, including the departing Jasper Stuyven riding in his him town on Sunday, should help bring some success.

The Renewi Tour has come in many iterations over its previous 20 editions. From the Eneco Tour of Benelux won by Bobby Julich in 2005, there have been stages in Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxembourg over the years, but now it is largely Belgium based.

However, it’s managed to consistently provide a great blend of pancake flat sprint stages and punchy classics stages, it really is a five day celebration of those spring races we all know and love. This year the race begins with two sprint stages followed by three punchy days where the general classification will be decided.

The opening two days are the best bet for a bunch finish, stage one starting in Terneuzen and finishing in Breskens on the slither of the Netherlands to the west of the mouth of the Schelde river. The rest of the race is entirely in Belgium, stage two starting on the North Sea beach resort of Blankenberge with the expected bunch kick coming 172.7km later in Ardooie. Just because it's summer don't think the wind can't blow like it does in the spring.

There’s been a stage finish in Geraardsbergen in every edition since 2012, when former World Champion Alessandro Ballan won en-route to taking the GC. Starting in the flat lands of Aalter the race heads south, tackling a couple of cobbled sectors before arriving in Geraardsbergen for two-and-a half laps of a circuit which includes ascents of both the Muur van Geraardsergen and the Bosberg. And if that’s not enough, the finish line is half way up the third ascent of the Muur, in the centre of Geraardsbergen.

The race stays on a similar lumpy theme for the final two stages, heading east for day four and the longest stage, a 198.5km race between Riemst and Bilzen-Hoeselt. It’s up and down all day, with the classic, short sharp climbs and narrow roads, on a number of circuits, which run alongside, but never actually cross the Dutch border, just outside Maastricht.

Starting and finishing in Leuven, the Renewi Tour closes by returning to the scene of the 2021 World Championships, and while the finish line is in a different place to that four years ago, the closing circuit includes three of the same climbs. Combine these with the tight turns and narrow streets, organisers have created a parcours on which the peloton have every opportunity to create a real spectacle.

The 2025 Renewi Tour will be broadcast on the familiar cycling channels, including Discovery, Max and Eurosport. In the United Kingdom, coverage will be shown on TNT Sports and streamed online via Discovery+. In the United States and Canada, the race will be available to watch on FloBikes.