Brussels Cycling Classic 2025

June 8, 2025 Historically known as Paris-Bruxelles from 1893-2012, the Brussels Cycling Classic is an odd mix between a Spring Classic and a Summer Grand Tour sprint stage. After leaving Etterbeek, the riders pass through Overijse on their way into the traditional East Flanders climbs to take on the Muur van Geraardsbergen, Bosberg, and Congoberg three times a piece. They exit the circuit with 50KM to go and head North and East to Brussels to the finish on flat roads after 205KM of racing. A reasonably large break got away consisting of Theodor August Clemmensen of Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe, Lionel Taminiaux of Lotto, Alessandro Iacchi of Solution Tech-Vini Fantini, Baptiste Vadic of TotalEnergies, Petr Kelemen of Tudor Pro Cycling, Jelle Johannink of Unibet-Tietema Rockets, and Tom Portsmouth of Wagner-Bazin. They had a maximum lead of around 4 minutes but on the second ascent of the Muur van Geraardsbergen, Lotto pushed hard in the peloton. They tried to split the bunch and managed to create a group of nine off the front including Jonas Abrahamsen of Uno-X Mobility, Dries Van Gestel of Soudal Quickstep, Laurenz Rex of Intermarché-Wanty, Edward Planckaert of Alpecin-Deceuninck, Cyril Barthe of Groupama-FDJ, Tim van Dijke of Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe, Tobias Lund Andresen of Picnic-PostNL, Arjen Livyns of Lotto, and Rory Townsend of Q36.5. With 67KM to go, the two front groups came together to make 16 riders at the front but their lead was just 20 seconds on the peloton. Abrahamsen, van Dijke, and Planckaert went clear over the Muur van Geraardsbergen for the third and final time and kept a slender lead over the Bosberg. The peloton grouped back up and were able to organize a strong chase, bringing the race all back together with just less than 10KM to go. The big sprint teams like Uno-X Mobility, Soudal Quickstep, and Alpecin-Deceuninck came to the front with 5KM to go. Jonas Geens of Flanders Baloise sent a flyer on a small rise outside of 4KM to go but was caught 2.5KM later as Uno-X Mobility ramped up the pace. The final kilometer dragged up the entire way to the finish. Pavel Bittner of Picnic-PostNL launched first but it was too long. Tim Merlier of Soudal Quickstep was on Bittner's wheel and waited until he started to fade before making his bid for the win. When Merlier went with 150M to go, no one was able to even get on his wheel let alone come around. He won by multiple bike lengths to Alexis Renard of Cofidis and Arnaud De Lie of Lotto in second and third respectively.