Lesser known races 2025 edition

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Belgian Katowice race coming up today. Totally flat all day apart from a tiny climb with top one kilometer from the finish, then a descent from that leads to the finish. Wtf?

Okay, at least it seems like there will be some turns which maybe will dial the danger a bit down.
 
Looking at the average speeds the sprint stages in the Tour of Lithuania are being raced absurdly hard for a 2.2 stage race. Stage 2 was 176kms long with an average speed of 49.66 km/h and stage 3 was 160.8kms long with an average speed of 49.85 km/h. Martin Laas from the Quick Pro Team (formerly known as the Ferei Quick-Panda Podium Mongolia Team) was 2nd on stage 2 and won stage 3.
Such high speeds for +3.5h/+3h are actually demanding, you need enough strong rouleur domestiques to keep the tempo up and even in the bunch the power needed might not be a problem for the sprinters and bigger guys, but the small lightweight climbers will actually get worn down by tempo since their raw power output is much lower, pretty much forcing them to ride one zone higher for the duration of the race.
 
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