The prestigious elite men’s WorldTour event will be held for the eighty-fourth time, but of course the organisers have also thought of the women and the most outstanding riders in the junior age groups, so there will be six more races before the main event. Around Ieper, 123.9 kilometres await the best riders in the junior category in this year’s opening round of the Nations’ Cup.

In the junior boys’ race, five key walls make progress difficult, namely the Baneberg and two times the Monteberg and the Kemmelberg. As for the chances, it is likely that, as in previous editions, the peloton will be torn apart, with Vlad van Mechelen (Belgium), Matteo Gross (Germany), Joshua Tarling (Great Britain) and Niels Michotte (Luxembourg) among the more familiar names.

Eighteen national teams and three regional teams, including the Hungarian national team (Bálint Feldhoffer, Márkó Tóth, Bálint Kárpáti, Gergely Erdős, Ádám Szöllősy and Milán Radics) will compete in the event.

There will, of course, be a home Nations’ Cup Youth World Cup race in 2022, which, as originally planned, will be the ninth stop on the ten-round series from 17 to 19 August.