Why the Tour of Limburg is now on Wednesday and Brabantse Pijl on Friday

Under the impetus of Flanders Classics, the week ahead of the hill classics has been thoroughly reshuffled. Since last year, the Brabantse Pijl no longer takes place on Wednesday—it now falls on the Friday before the Amstel Gold Race—but instead features the revamped Ronde van Limburg. So far, these changes do not yet seem to have a major impact on the starting field.

The UCI 1.1 race Ronde van Limburg was still scheduled for May until 2024. By placing it firmly in the peak period of Belgian cycling, the race is expected to gain importance. For the 2026 edition, six WorldTeams are set to compete, with Tim Merlier among them, a top champion and the clear favorite to win the race.

With this, Flanders Classics CEO Tomas Van den Spiegel partly achieves his goal. "The intention is to keep the fast riders who can also handle cobbled sections in competition a bit longer by including the Ronde van Limburg," he told us last year. "Riders targeting the Scheldeprijs could easily combine the two. It’s only good that Belgian Limburg, a region where cycling is popular but which lacks top races, now also gets its own race in the spring."

But what about the Brabantse Pijl? It now takes place only two days before the grueling Amstel Gold Race. Unlike last year, there are few big names in the startlist. "In my opinion, these two races are actually very complementary. We have shortened the Brabantse Pijl to just 160 kilometers, which is a deliberate statement on our part. We want to truly position the Brabantse Pijl as the most explosive race of the spring,"

"We noticed that with the previous format, we missed out on many teams that used to come to the Brabantse Pijl," said Van den Spiegel. "Partly because the race was too close to the Tour of the Basque Country, but also due to the reduction in race days per rider. Teams are making more choices. We addressed that issue. And for us, the spring puzzle is now set for the coming years."