What makes the ideal parcours for a bike race? Is it one that ensures that the cream rises to the top, and the strongest and most deserving rider comes out on top? Or one that leaves plenty of room for tactical nuance and unpredictability, where underdogs have the potential to take the favourites by surprise?
The answer is, of course, more complicated than the simple binary, and much depends on the kind of race. But the trend in recent years (at least, in men’s cycling) has been towards the former. Think back over the last couple of seasons, and there’s been a far higher ratio of big races decided by large gaps and solo escapes from the strongest rider. Increasingly, the same riders are winning the big races, aided by parcours that play into their strengths and give everyone else scant chance.
A few weeks ago there was an announcement confirming that there would be changes made to the E3 Saxo Classic route. The organisers of the Belgian cobbled Classic have added a second ascent of the famous Oude Kwaremont climb, in addition to a new double ascent of the E3 Col, bringing the total elevation gain up from 2,800m to 3,000m. The race is already seen as the closest proximate to the Tour of Flanders, a semi-classic shorter and with less climbing than De Ronde, but still challenging enough to be the perfect trial run for it. Now, the races are yet more similar.
What’s the reason for the change? There’s been some speculation that it’s a ploy to attract a certain Tadej Pogačar. In the eyes of race organisers, the Slovenian is box office, and securing his presence represents a major marketing coup. Despite his recent interest in the spring Classics, Pogačar hasn’t returned to the E3 Saxo Classic since making his debut in 2023, when he finished third behind Wout van Aert and Mathieu van der Poel. Perhaps the organisers believe that the inclusion of more climbing, that plays more to his strengths than the riders who defeated him that day, might be enough to persuade him to add the race to his 2026 itinerary.
Read more: Did Tadej Pogačar's domination make the 2025 season boring or brilliant?
They would not be the first race organisers to have Pogačar in mind when designing race routes. Christian Prudhomme didn’t hide that last week, when announcing the route for next year’s Tour de France that had no radical changes or ideas to complicate matters for the defending champion. "I imagine that when Pogačar sees there is L'Alpe d'Huez twice, he'll want to win up there,” he said, when talking about his reasons for the route’s headline dispatch. And RCS had been eager to bring Pogačar to the Giro d’Italia for years, eventually succeeding in 2024 with a climber-friendly route.
Read more: 2026 Tour de France promises suspense until the end – but there are few obstacles for Tadej Pogačar
But while Pogačar’s presence at these races ensures attention in the star’s pulling power, it’s often at the expense of exciting racing — especially when the parcours plays so much to his strengths. Recent editions of Liège–Bastogne–Liège and Il Lombardia, for example, have become processions, Pogačar winning the last two editions of each by over a minute. His claiming these races via a solo attack has come to seem inevitable, yet the organisers have done little to mix things up and potentially disrupt the formula.
In the case of Pogačar’s other happiest hunting ground, Strade Bianche, the parcours has actually gotten harder. Aware that the monuments it is often compared with are considerably longer, more elevation gain and kilometres have been added to the route since 2024, a consequence being that the 37 seconds Pogačar achieved his first win here in 2021 has since been eclipsed by massive margins of 2:44 and 1:24. As the parcours gets harder, the race has gotten less competitive.
Even a race like the World Championships, which has the freedom to come up with an entirely new course every year, has succumbed to this same pattern. The 2025 route in Kigali was among the toughest ever, to the detriment even of the continent’s star Biniam Girmay, who almost didn’t ride the race due to how little the route suited him. What might have been an intriguing anomaly on the race calendar would be a major Classic that wasn’t suited to Pogačar where he is able to rely on his superior strength to obliterate the opposition, without having to think too hard about any kind of tactics.
There were exceptions last year, and they were among the most exciting of the season. The route of the Amstel Gold Race has frequently been tinkered over the past decade or so, and this year, citing the normality of long breaks succeeding, the Cauberg climb was reintroduced to the finale. The result was one of the best races of the season, where Pogačar’s usual approach of attacking early to win solo failed, when he was brought back, then missed out on a thrilling three-up sprint between himself, Remco Evenepoel and surprise winner Mattias Skjelmose.
And there’s Milan-Sanremo, a race often bemoaned by some as being boring for its long, flat build up, but which has come into its own recently as the one race that continues to evade Pogačar. With its easier parcours and little amount of climbing, a multitude of riders from pure sprinters, to explosive climbers, to opportunist chancers are in contention for the win, and Pogačar has to stretch his mental muscles as well as those in his legs in order to try and find a way to win.
Much of the onus has been placed on his competitors in terms of coming up with a way to defeat Tadej Pogačar, but they can only work with whatever parcours they are given; it’s also up to route designers to help make the racing more interesting. While that shouldn’t mean purposefully designing routes to deter Pogačar specifically, as things stand the balance between rewarding strength and rewarding tactics feels off. The lesson of the last two seasons should be that harder parcours does not necessarily equate to better racing, and organisers will need to be more imaginative with their route designs if they are to prevent their races from becoming too predictable.
