After the cobbles, the climbs: every year as soon as the curtain falls on Paris-Roubaix, attention swivels a couple of hours' drive east towards the hills of southern Limberg in Holland and Wallonie for the Ardennes Classics. With the key difference that if attempts to combine the pavés of northern France with the climbing Classics used to be rare, this season, that's very much not the case.
Amstel Gold Race gets the ball rolling, with its 59th edition for the men's race and 11th for the women, and Tadej Pogačar will attempt to become the first male rider since Erik Zabel in 2000 to podium in both Amstel Gold (which Zabel won) and Paris-Roubaix, where Zabel took third.
In the women's race, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot and Lorena Wiebes will aim to follow Marianne Vos' second place in Roubaix and victory in Amstel back in 2021 with double podiums of their own. The crunch question for all of them will be how well they have recovered from the previous Sunday's effort.
Yet more significant changes in the men's race are the return of the Amstel's most emblematic climb of the Cauberg to the finale, being re-positioned for the first time in nine years, just 2km from the finish rather than being a distant 20km from the line. In the women's race, the Cauberg – which had retained that 'old' position throughout, although there are minor adjustments on the run-in – will be climbed no less than five times, in the men's race, just three.
However, in both events on Sunday, Holland's most famous ascent will likely be crucial in the final outcome.
Brabantse Pijl on Friday will almost certainly provide some key clues as to who will be both well-positioned on the crucial opening left-hand bend of the Cauberg, then remain up there for the steepest 12% segment midway up.
The two main factors to remember, though, will be the presence of Pogačar in the men's race, while in the women's event, the spreading out of the top contenders between multiple teams after lots of transfers over the winter could be equally pivotal.
Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG)
There are very, very few races out there where Tadej Pogačar would not be the leading favourite right now, and Amstel Gold is certainly not one of them. The Slovenian's current status and track record in one-day racing is such that only Mathieu van der Poel can stop the UAE Team Emirates-XRG leader from automatically becoming the point of reference.
So, given the Dutchman – himself a winner in Amstel back in 2019 – is not taking part in his country's biggest one-day race this year, come Sunday in Maastricht, it goes without saying Pogačar will be the rider to beat. Particularly when having won Flanders in 2023, then gone on to conquer Amstel, there's a fair case for saying he's been here before.
It's wrong and unfair to say that with Pogačar on the startline, the rest are racing for second. For one thing, the 'new' route of the 2025 Amstel with the Cauberg regaining its former prominence calls for different tactics than when he won it in 2023. Plus, there could be some concern that he might still be paying a price, condition-wise, for riding Roubaix the previous weekend.
Furthermore, with so many climbs and technical, switchback roads to deal with, even for an ultra-strong team like UAE, it could prove difficult to keep all the dangerous breaks from getting away.
But Pogačar has proven more than versatile enough to win in unfamiliar conditions and terrain in the past, and the rainbow jersey is, amongst many things, a constant reminder of that. He clearly has the condition, the morale, and the team backup, too, to go for a second Amstel win in three years.
So if we're not quite at the point where anything but a Pogačar win would be a massive surprise, for fans, a lot of Sunday's race will likely be spent wondering where he will launch his solo attack to take his umpteenth one-day victory, all the same. Could this be the start of a bid to become the first male rider since Philippe Gilbert to take the Ardennes 'triple'?
Demi Vollering (FDJ-SUEZ)
When Demi Vollering soloed to victory in Amstel Gold two years ago, it was part of her greatest-ever season to date, and it also ushered in a rare Ardennes triple that continued with Flèche Wallonne and continued with Liège-Bastogne-Liège.
Fast forward two years and a rollercoaster spring in 2024 following her announcement she was leaving SDWorx-ProTime, this time round, Vollering is tackling Amstel with a very different set of circumstances. While her victory in Strade Bianche over former teammate Anna van der Breggen was a convincing reminder that she is going from strength to strength in her new squad, FDJ-SUEZ, Amstel is her first race back since taking a break after Milan-SanRemo and going to altitude training in the Canaries. So it remains to be seen how quickly she can get back into the thick of the action.
Results from previous Amstels would strongly suggest she'll be up there once again: apart from victory in 2023, Vollering also has two second places and a seventh place in her palmares, a track record second only to all-time great Marianne Vos. Vollering has already shown that she is also fitting in brilliantly at FDJ-SUEZ.
So perhaps the key test for her is how the race changes with the reformatted approach to the Cauberg, and how well somebody with such an excellent track record in Amstel can adapt to it. You'd suspect she'd do so brilliantly, but the final verdict, one way or another, will only emerge on Sunday.
Tom Pidcock (Q36.5)
It was the kind of poetic justice that could only happen in cycling. When Tom Pidcock's 2024 Amstel Gold victory was taken by the narrowest of margins against Marc Hirschi in a sprint, it was the mirror image of Pidcock's equally hair's breadth defeat in the same race finish against Wout van Aert three years previously.
But the difference in placings meant that Pidcock, already the best ever finisher for Great Britain in Liège-Bastogne-Liège thanks to second place in 2023 in La Doyenne, had become the first rider from his country to win any of the men's Ardennes Classics.
Or as he said with somewhat acerbic humour afterwards, given how close his loss to Van Aert's victory had been – "I was going to say ‘yeah it’s great to win for the second time’, but that might create some controversy."
So, where does the defending AMstel champion go from here? Brabantse Pijl, which Pidcock also won back in the day, should provide us with some indication of his form after his post San Remo break. But Amstel is the much bigger test, and Pogačar a formidable rival in anyone's book.
In his favour, quite apart from what has been a very promising start to his time with Q36.5, Pidcock has never been afraid of testing his luck, no matter how daunting the opposition, as we saw in Strade Bianche when he tried to take on Pogačar. Furthermore, blistering accelerations on ascents like the Cauberg have always been an in-house speciality, so the route change should suit the Briton. Is a second (third?) last-ditch win for Pidcock in the offing?
Marianne Vos (Visma-Lease a Bike)
To say Marianne Vos's relationship with the Cauberg has always been fruitful is no exaggeration, but it's also been invariably dramatic. In 2012, she took one of her most spectacular World Championships victories there, just a few months after clinching Olympic gold. Then, in 2021, she fought back from seeming defeat on the Cauberg to get a last-ditch sprint win.
Then last year, just when Lorena Wiebes had sat up before the line to celebrate her victory, only for Vos to throw her bike past and claim victory in the final instant possible, was the kind of object lesson in the benefits of never giving up that has made Vos such a special bike rider. Even at 37, she never ceases to find new ways to amaze.
So what's in store with Vos on Sunday? Visma-Lease a Bike will be coming in with one of the strongest teams and considerably heightened morale after Pauline Ferrand-Prévot's triumph in Paris-Roubaix, and where Vos finished just one spot off the podium in fourth.
Already the record holder in what is now – sadly, after the demise of the Ronde van Drenthe – Holland's only one-day WorldTour race, Vos could put her tally beyond immediate reach on Sunday. And in the process, keep the winning feeling going for Visma into the Ardennes Classics.
Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep)
Cometh the hour, cometh the man - finally. After his curtain raiser comeback performance in Brabantse Pijl as his 2025 season debut, Remco Evenepoel heads to Amstel Gold, in what are uncharted waters for the Belgian star for multiple reasons.
Somewhat surprisingly, Evenepoel has never raced Amstel Gold previously, for all his undeniable climbing and one-day talents, which you'd have thought would have made the Dutch hilly Classic a natural port of call. (He's also never only done Brabantse Pijl once before back in 2022, when he finished sixth.)
But race debuts in major Ardennes Classics have hardly gone badly for Evenepoel in the past – witness his two victories in two participations in Liège-Bastogne-Liège – so that is hardly a challenge in itself. What may well make it a tougher challenge is his ultra-delayed start to the season, and how quickly he can hit race rhythm against competition that has been racing hard since January or February.
Brabantse Pijl will offer some clues on that score, but a test as hard as Amstel, with over 260 kilometres of relentless climbing, is another whole step up. Particularly with a rival as formidable as Tadej Pogačar to face.
On the plus side, with the best-ranked rider in the world as his biggest challenger, Evenepoel will know exactly what level he'll need to reach to be in with a chance of success. But realistically, more familiar terrain like Liège could well be where Evenepoel has had sufficient time and past experience to make a serious impact on the results.
Lotte Kopecky (SDWorx-Protime)
After winning the Tour of Flanders, Lotte Kopecky's spring, and arguably the whole first half of the season, is already a major success. But Amstel Gold is another major target in anyone's books. As a runner-up in her debut back in 2023 and huge success in one-day racing of all kinds, including a very hilly World Championships last year, Kopecky clearly has what it takes to triumph on a climb like the Cauberg.
The question of how she and SDWorx-ProTime opt to play their multiple cards, though, is going to be crucial for Sunday's outcome in an exceptionally deep field. Teammate and former winner Anna van der Breggen is another obvious potential contender, and following her dramatic near-miss last year courtesy of Vos and her own miscalculation, Lorena Wiebes will surely have some sense of unfinished business, too.
Any team with so many options on the table will also be expected to take a large part of the responsibility of keeping the race under control, too, particularly when memories of how Omloop Het Nieuwsblad developed into a major power vacuum this year have yet to fade completely.
But with the potential for so many race scenarios developing given that so many heavyweights will be taking part, Kopecky's versatility as a racer has served her brilliantly in the past, and on Sunday, it could prove crucial.
Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike)
Tadej Pogačar won't be the only rider in the men's race trying to combine top performances in the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix with Amstel Gold this year. Having ridden the Hell of the North, Wout van Aert will be another key contender for Sunday, given that he, like Pogačar, is a former winner of Amstel.
Furthermore, both he and the Slovenian are unfamiliar with the 'new' Amstel finale, in Van Aert's case, having only ridden the Dutch Classics twice, in 2021 and, further back, in 2019.
But quite apart from the riders themselves, that's as far as the similarities go. One key difference is that Amstel is Van Aert's last race before he takes a pre-Giro d'Italia break, whereas Pogačar will likely be aiming to become the first rider in 14 years to win all three Ardennes Classics. For Van Aert, a victory in Amstel would be a much-needed boost to his morale after over two years without a WorldTour one-day win, and on his team's home soil, to boot.
Two fourth places in Monuments of the calibre of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix indicate he's got the underlying race form right now, but the Belgian champion's sprinting seems to have taken something of a nosedive in recent weeks. Nobody, though, is ruling him out for Sunday.
Elisa Longo Borghini (UAE Team ADQ)
A bad crash and concussion in the Tour de Flanders left Italian National Champion Elisa Longo Borghini out of the running for the defence of her second Ronde victory last year, and out of Paris-Roubaix, which she won back in 2022, as well. But her run of success earlier this spring, right up to winning Dwars door Vlaanderen, would strongly suggest she has the underlying condition to opt for victory. And then, of course, there's her previous Amstel Gold performances as well.
It's true that to date, results-wise at least Longo Borghini has always performed better on the harder, longer climbs of Liège than in Amstel's comparatively milder fare. But a stunning solo victory in last year's Brabantse Pijl was ample proof that she knows what it takes to win a top hilly Classic of the cobbled variety, and the results from last year's Ardennes – fifth in Amstel, third in Flèche and second in Liège – are yet more indications that she could well be in the running for Sunday.
In fact, you could even say that if Longo Borghini has already taken multiple wins in Classics with tough climbs like the Giro dell'Emilia and Trofeo Alfredo Binda on home soil, victory in a WorldTour hilly Classic in northern Europe is one of the few gaps in her one-day palmarès, one of Italy's most talented riders ever has yet to fill. Could this year's Amstel be where she sets the record straight?
Michael Matthews (Jayco-AIUIa)
On paper, everything about Amstel Gold says it's made for Michael Matthews. A strong sprint after a tough uphill finale - check. Plenty of experience at getting through the mayhem of positioning that so often affects the Amstel finale – check. A strong foundation of team support, but can also handle sprint finishes solo – check. Some solid previous results in the Ardennes – check, including ten Amstel performances and a third place back in 2015, but also tenth last year.
Good, if not great, results in the 2025 build-up - check, including a fourth place in his fetish Monument, Milan-San Remo.
So far, though, it hasn't happened. Despite several wins in the hillier Canadian World Cups and the Bretagne Classic on this side of the Atlantic, Matthews has yet to claim a victory in Amstel, with that podium place in 2015 his best performance to date.
That said, with a track record of Matthews' calibre, and just the burst of speed you need to see off your rivals after the Cauberg, the Australian is definitely an outsider who could be in with a shot. Particularly as he was one of the very few riders to defeat Pogačar last year, in the GP Québec, and with nearly 3,000 metres of vertical climbing, only slightly less than Amstel's 3,100 metres of uphill too. All the more reason for optimism, then, though.
Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM zondacrypto)
It's been six years since Kasia Niewiadoma ended a 2km breakaway with victory in Amstel Gold, but four top five places including a third in her race debut out of seven participations, not to mention a DNF-free palmares in Amstel to date, strongly suggest Niewiadoma has retained the wherewithal to go for a repeat success.
Having skipped Paris-Roubaix and Brabantse Pijl, too since taking fourth in Flanders, she could arguably be fresher than her rivals.
Assuming the traditional showdown on the Cauberg hasn't been affected by the organisers decision to send the women's race on a slightly different approach road after the Bemelerberg, using narrower roads prior to the Daalhemerweg descent, the 2024 Tour de France Femmes champion has never been afraid of showing her condition on Amstel's crunch climb.
Last year, the Polish star won in the Ardennes Week on the even more daunting Mur de Huy at La Flèche Wallonne, too. Don't be surprised if she is back in the thick of the action on Sunday.
