By Rebecca Reza

The Classics Season is upon us, opening with the celebration of the 75th edition of Omloop Het Niewsblad. The who’s who of Classics racers will all be at the start line, itching to get their season underway. With 200 kilometers on tap, 13 climbs and 9 cobbled sectors before the finish in Ninove, the men's course remains unchanged from 2019.  

Read on for the five big favorites for Saturday's classic kickoff. 

Znenêk Štybar 

Deceuninck – Quick –Step’s Znenek Stybar will face stiff competition in defending his 2019 title. Stybar launched a late solo attack last year against his breakaway companions that included 2x winner Greg Van Avermaet, just before the 1km to go banner to earn his first Classics solo win. He would later follow up with his second a few weeks later at E3 Binckbank Classic. 

The Classics specialist is already off to a strong start this season, similar to how he began 2019 by winning a stage in his first race of the year, this time winning stage 6 at the Vuelta San Juan in Argentina in January. 

Stybar will have a solid team to back him, including Bob Jungels who just returned from high altitude racing at Tour of Colombia 2.1, where the lowest stage sat at over 2500m. Kasper Asgreen and Ilio Keisse will also play key roles in Deceuninck's line up.

Greg Van Avermaet

Olympic Champion Greg Van Avermaet was left with no legs in the final meters of Olmoop last February, after having been thoroughly worked over by his breakaway companions. The Olympic chamion will be hungry to earn a third Omloop win as he begins the 16th classics season of his career. His CCC teammate, Matteo Trentin finished 9th last year while riding for Mitchelton-Scott, and will bring a new level of depth to the young CCC team. 

Van Avermaet arrives in Belgium after racing the Volta ao Algarve with Trentin. The Belgium showed he is in top form after keeping the pace set by the climbers on the decisive mountains in Portugal, something that will surely help on Saturday when the race hits the Molenberg with 40km left to the line. 

Mads Pedersen

No stranger to the Classics, the current UCI Road World Champion Mads Pedersen will be eager to win his first spring classic wearing the rainbow stripes for Trek-Segafredo. Pedersen finished second in the 2018 Tour of Flanders, a race very similar to Omloop Hets Nieuwsblad, which uses many of the same cobbled climbs and sectors. 

Like Pedersen's world championship ride, his podium finish at Flanders showed the level of grit and determination that the young Dane is capable of. With cold rain expected to greet the peloton on Saturday, Pedersen may find himself in the very conditions in which he excels. The world champion will be heavily marked in his rainbow jersey, but he will have classics specialists Jasper Stuyven and Edward Theuns to help get him to the line.

Philippe Gilbert

It’s a new year and a new team for Philippe Gilbert, having signed a 3-year contract with Lotto Soudal last season. 

Omloop Het Nieuwsblad was Gilbert’s first major win in 2006, and the 37 year old Belgian has proven time and time again that he is not done winning yet. Last year Gilbert finished 8th at Omloop, playing a team role for Stybar who was up the road. Lotto Soudal's classic roster does not have the depth of Deceuninck Quick Step's so Gilbert will not likely be seen sitting back in the closing kilometers of the race. That said, he will be flanked by a very capable Tim Wellens who finished 3rd in 2019. Look for the Belgian duo to disrupt the Deceuninck playbook this spring.

Wout van Aert 

Wout van Aert originally was not slated to race Omloop this Saturday. However, due to growing fears of the COVID-19 virus impacting the spring racing calendar, particularly in Italy, van Aert has changed his racing program accordingly.

Van Aert has not raced in 2020 since the conclusion of his cyclocross campaign, so his road race fitness remains a mystery. However the young Belgian is showing promising form at a team training camp in Tenerife. If Strava KOMs are any indication, van Aert may be back to the form we saw him at in July, prior to the crash which derailed his 2019 season.

Van Aert was originally not planning on starting his road season this early. Conversely, van Aert's cyclocross rival Mathieu van der Poel was meant to take to the start at Omloop. The Dutchman however has reportedly come down with the flu, so fans will have to wait for the first duel between the cyclocross world champions on the cobbled bergs of Belgium.