The white roads of Tuscany loom large as the pro cycling world gears up for Strade Bianche, where one rider will start as a heavy favorite to leave the field in his (literal) dust. A year on from his solo attack to end all solo attacks, Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) has the world wondering what he'll be doing for an encore – and organizers have us wondering if they really needed to add another hilly gravel sector to make this race even more suited to Pogačar's talents.
Here's what you need to know ahead of the 2025 edition of Strade Bianche, starting with a little teaser of the pre-race favorites before we look at the updated route, the stars, and the storylines. Looking for a preview of the women's race? Matt de Neef has you covered – just follow the link above.
The favorites
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐: Tadej Pogačar
⭐⭐⭐⭐: N/A
⭐⭐⭐: Tom Pidcock, Marc Hirschi, Tim Wellens, Toms Skujiņš
⭐⭐: Mathias Vaček, Lennert van Eetvelt, Christian Scaroni
⭐: Ben Healy, Pello Bilbao, Kevin Vauquelin, Romain Grégoire, Valentin Madouas, Matej Mohorič, Michał Kwiatkowski
How to watch
Men's Strade Bianche is Saturday, March 8 and starts at 11:20 CET/5:20 EST/20:20 AEST, with streaming coverage picking up around 13:30 CET/7:30 EST/22:20 AEST (exact times vary by broadcaster). Expect the race to finish around 16:45 CET/10:45 EST/1:45 (Sunday) AEST.
Streaming is on Max in the US, TNT Sports in the UK, SBS in Australia, and FloBikes in Canada. As always, our how to watch guide has the details on the full WorldTour calendar.
The route
All things considered, this year's race will look a lot like last year's Strade Bianche, which was designed to be the hardest yet, with a few new challenges added to the profile to make for a more selective race. Apparently convinced that things still weren't hard enough, however, organizers have gone a little bit further this time, giving us even more gravel for 2025 while keeping most of the route the same as it was in 2024.
All told, riders will cover 16 sectors and 82 km of gravel, compared to last year's 15 sectors totaling 71 km.
As ever, riders will roll out from Siena, and they won't have long to wait for their first taste of gravel. The first two of those sectors are slightly tweaked from last year's race, covering similar ground but with a bit more total gravel and less space between them. The gravelly climb from Bagnaia to Grotti, just the second sector of the race, is no slouch, and two more sectors follow in short succession making for a total of four sectors in the first 50 km of the race.
The peloton will then get a bit of a break from kicking up dust but that doesn't mean that riders will be able to take it easy as the Montalcino climb is up next, and then it's on to the next flurry of sterrato. The fifth sector is the longest in the race, at 11.9 km, and it is followed quickly by an 8 km sixth sector, and then comes the big change to this year's route, a new and lumpy stretch of gravel from Serravalle (near a stunning medieval estate!). The sector is 9.3 km in length and followed almost immediately by the steep gravel climb that is sector eight, and after a descent riders will then head into perhaps the marquee gravel sector of the race at Monte Sante Marie.
It was there that Pogačar launched his unprecedented attack in 2024, leaving everyone behind on the tricky terrain – and this time around, there could be even more fatigue in his rivals' legs when they hit this part of the race. Could Pogačar do it again even though everyone will be expecting it? Could he go even further out this time?
We'll consider that in a moment, but first, we'll wrap up with the route. Organizers have made only small changes to the percorso of the final third of the race, where seven gravel sectors and some seriously undulating roads could provide further opportunities for riders to get away. In days of yore when race-winning attacks came closer to the finish, the penultimate gravel sector at the Colle Pinzuto might have seemed like the most natural inflection point of the race, with a last chance for riders to solo clear on Le Tolfe shortly thereafter.
From there, it's about 12 km to the line, but the final challenge awaits just before the finish as riders will tackle a short but brutally steep climb of about half a kilometer into Siena's Piazza del Campo, where the quick descent to the line will offer sweet relief after double-digit gradients that max out at 16%.
The stars and storylines
We go into Strade with a few questions on our mind, staring with ...
Is a harder Strade Bianche actually better?
The unique challenges of Strade Bianche are what make it so enjoyable to watch, so it's easy to understand why organizers would want to keep upping the ante with more and more of the gravel and climbs that define the race – but there comes a point where you risk a race being so hard that the unmatchable power numbers of one star rider become insurmountable for his rivals. We may have already reached that point last year.
This year, organizers have thrown yet another lumpy gravel sector into the equation, further pushing Strade Bianche into territory that seems to be turning off some of the very small number of riders that might actually put up a fight here. Past winners of Strade Bianche include Paris-Roubaix winners like the now-retired Fabian Cancellara and Alpecin-Deceuninck's Mathieu van der Poel, but last year's changes helped solidify this as a race more for puncheurs who can handle the tricky terrain than for tricky-terrain specialists who can handle a punchy climb or two. Van der Poel skipped the race last year and he is skipping it again in 2025. So too is former winner Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike).
As such, we are left with a field where most of the headliners are more likely to shine in the Ardennes Classics and Il Lombardia than in Flanders or Roubaix – and no one is better at races like Liège-Bastogne-Liège than Tadej Pogačar. Really, it's not even close, and so the bookies have him at absurdly short odds to repeat at Strade Bianche on Saturday too. That makes it hard not to wonder whether organizers might have been better off cutting out some of the gravel climbs rather than adding another one. Something to ponder for 2026, perhaps.
In the meantime, Pogačar is a deserving heavy favorite.
Can Pidcock or Hirschi really contend ... or is the next-likeliest winner actually just another UAE rider?
Barring a crash, which of the other top contenders for Strade Bianche actually has a chance to match him when he inevitably attacks on the Monte Sante Marie or Le Tolfe or even just in the final push to the Piazza del Campo?
His highest-profile rivals are probably 2023 winner Tom Pidcock (Q36.5) and Marc Hirschi (Tudor), but it has to be said that it would be a surprise for either of those riders to actually drop Pogačar. On this kind of terrain, that's just not something we've seen very often, so if they really want to battle for a win instead of fighting for scraps, Pidcock and Hirschi both might want to consider tactical approaches to catching Pogačar out of position when he isn't expecting a long-range strike.
Pidcock, in particular, has shown that he can sustain a solo move in this race, attacking from 45 km out to win in 2023, back when that seemed like a pretty long-range strike. He has looked great so far in 2025 and if he truly wants to be the consistent contender that he has shown flashes of being in the past, going head-to-head with Pogačar at Strade Bianche is a perfect opportunity. Hirschi also already has a win on the young season and is also with a new team. We have not seen him battling Pogačar directly in recent years since they were teammates, but maybe all he needed to emerge as a true superstar was to leave UAE behind? We may find out.
In any case, it's worth pondering whether it's more likely that Tim Wellens wins the race when UAE sends him up the road to apply pressure to Pogačar's opponents. He's one of the six riders in the Strade Bianche field that Pogačar might not mercilessly chase down, thanks to the UAE logo on his back, and he has the skillset for Strade too, so it's not far-fetched to consider him a serious contender to win. In Isaac del Toro, UAE has another intriguing card to play.
Who are the other outsiders to watch?
In a similar vein, it could be worth keeping an eye just a little further down the list of favorites for potential winners that might be able to sneak away if they can time their moves right, and Lidl-Trek has two of those riders set to make the start on Saturday. One is last year's runner-up Toms Skujiņš and the other is the up-and-coming Mathias Vaček. Despite Skujiņš's 2024 ride and Vaček's fast-rising profile, neither will have quite as many eyeballs on them as Pidcock, and that could be to their advantage.
The same could be said for Lennert van Eetvelt (Lotto), Ben Healy (EF Education-EasyPost), Pello Bilbao, Kevin Vauquelin (Arkéa-B&B Hotels), Groupama-FDJ's Romain Grégoire and Valentin Madouas, Matej Mohorič (Bahrain Victorious), and Christian Scaroni (XDS Astana). Their ability to fly at least a little bit under the radar could be key.
We'll know soon enough.
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