Hello, and welcome to the Rund un Köln preview! Last year Yohann Gène, managed to win from the breakaway, overpowering Paul Martens and Francesco Lasca. This year's profile is basically the same, but let's take a look.



The race has some hills at the beginning but in the end of the race we have some totally flat kilometers until the finish line.
Let's now take a look to the 118 riders that will start this classic:



We know that anyone of those riders can win this race but let's take a look to the main favourites to this race.



Marcel Kittel
The German sprinter from Belkin is a huge favourite to win in case of a peloton arrival. He has also a strong team to help him with domestiques like Hofland, Renshaw and Martens.

André Greipel
The Gorilla comes to Koln to win and he brings strong domestiques like Vangenetchen, Henderson or Van Hummel to help him.



Carlo Calzone
The young italian sprinter from Movistar brings an sprint focused team with Ventoso, Lobato, Sbaragli and Rojas. Let's see if they all combined give an amazing or a terrible result.

Abasi Abundi
The Nigeria biggest talent comes to this race with only one pure lead-out to help him. Let's see if his sprint power is enough to make him achieve the win.


Edvald Boassen Hagen
The norwegian brings a really strong team, but with no big lead-out will EBH choose the right wheel?

Mario Guido
The italian from Team Colombia will have to do all the work from himself if he wants a good result. Will he sucede?

Sacha Modolo & Ricardo Machado
From the opposite side of the sprinters above, both have a strong squad to help them in the finale, but not having the power of Greipel or Kittel, can they grab the win?

And that concludes the preview of 2014 Rund un Köln. Who will surpace the 192,6 km that separate them from the finish line? Find out tomorrow...

De Brabantse Pijl

This is a fairly well-settled course each year, starting in Leuven, a city of no great importance (unless you like beer), and ending atop the Schavei in Overijse, just southeast of Brussels. The Brabant Arrow is something of an arrow-and back, heading out to Halle before turning back, then getting waylaid in Overijse and making three circuits around the decisive group of five climbs. Last year this race was surprisingly won by Belgium native, Kevin Hulsmans riding for the Vini Fantini team at the time.


A solo victory for Hulsmans and a big one for Vini-Fantini

Hulsmans isn’t going to repeat his victory this year though as his team wasn’t invited by the organisers. However if I was a betting man, you can assume I would bet a lot on Peter Sagan of Cannondale to take home victory. Being one of het best on all terrains available at the race, He will be surely the marked man by many teams. We must not underestimate the true cobblers though, if Sep Vanmarcke (Belkin), Greg van Avermaet (BMC) or Alf Pedersen (Sky) manage to get clear on the cobbled climbs, it will be hard to get them back.

If things end up in a mass sprint however, the riders that will likely challenge Sagan are either Basque’s Rudy Verboven, Sky’s Edvald Boasson Hagen, IAM’s Heinrich Haussler or Lotto’s Jürgen Roelandts