Good day and thank you for opening this week’s edition of the Wheel Talk Newsletter! We had some excellent racing at Classic Lorient Agglomération over the weekend, plus we added some new “riders to watch” to the list after Tour de l’Avenir. The future of women’s cycling is bright, but with all this additional attention comes unnecessary social media bullying, as SD Worx-Protime will know all too well after the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift.
Wheel Talk
Enter your email address to get the latest news and analysis from the women’s peloton delivered directly to your inbox!
Get the latest news and analysis from the women’s peloton delivered directly to your inbox!
Classic Lorient Agglomération
Mischa Bredewold doubled up her win count in Plouay on Saturday. The European champ caught Chloe Dygert who made a solo run at the win with just under 1 km to go from a late race escape of three riders. Liane Lippert, who initiated the move, finished third behind Dygert.
Bredewold won the race last year prior to taking a surprise victory at the European Championships. After the race, Bredewold was emotional about the victory, and potentially her final race in the special jersey.
“It’s unbelievable, it really means a lot to me. It’s my last race in this jersey, and it’s been such an incredible year,” Bredewold said. “It’s been so special to wear it.”
“Last year, it was my first big victory here, it was already special for me to have today as the last day in this jersey. My teammate Lorena [Wiebes] texted me yesterday that she really wanted me to win, and the team was behind me. I was racing with a lot of emotions today, it means so much, they gave me wings today.”
The race came down to a three-rider move that gained a slim advantage with 5 km to go. Going into the final lap FDJ-Suez’s Amber Kraak had a strong advantage, but Movistar were fully behind Lippert who has proved her form is coming in strong for the later season races. Lippert attacked and Bredewold and Dygert followed. Lidl-Trek tried their best to chase down the three with Shirin van Anrooij working for Elisa Balsamo, but wouldn’t be able to make up the distance.
Lippert, Dygert and Bredewold worked well together for 4 km but started to play games as they passed under 1 km to go, which was when Dygert attacked. Or, more accurately, took advantage of Bredewold and Lippert looking at each other and simply rode away. Lippert did all the work to pull back the Olympic ITT bronze medalist, allowing Bredewold to save her energy for the final sprint.
While Bredewold has been active all season, winning stages of Ituliza Women and Thüringen Ladies Tour, Lippert and Dygert are only making waves on the road recently. Lippert started her season late due to an off-season injury and had a slow build before she eventually won a stage of the Giro d’Italia in July. She rode a strong race at the Tour to finish third in two stages. Dygert has been fully focused on the team pursuit and time trial events at the Paris Olympics and is finally turning her attention to racing for Canyon-SRAM on the road post-Games. She was a huge part of Kasia Niewiadoma’s Tour victory recently.
Bredewold can try to retain her jersey at the European road race on September 14 in Limburg, Belgium.
Tour de l’Avenir
Elsewhere in France, the U23 women got a rare opportunity to race separately from the elites. Marion Bunel, who raced the Tour de France Femmes for St Michel-Mavic-Auber 93, won the race and two stages for France. Her teammate Eglantine Rayer, normally racing in the colours of DSM Firmenich-PostNL, won the third stage and Belgium’s Lore De Schepper (AG Insurance-Soudal) won the opening 2.1 km prologue.
In its second year Tour de l’Avenir provided some women who normally race in a support role on their WorldTour teams to showcase their talents and allowed riders like Bunel to flex their muscles for the WorldTeams watching.
Bunel’s trade team is rumoured to be folding next season, although it’s possible it could be saved; if the rumours are true it will be yet another Continental team scraping by below the WorldTour level to collapse. While the top level continues to grow, the lower-level teams are falling to pieces. Take Le Col-Wahoo in the UK and DNA Cycling in the USA, for example.
Bunel’s performance, in addition to her results season-long, could secure her a contract on a WorldTeam for 2025.
Isabella Holmgren of Canada (normally representing Lidl-Trek) finished second overall, the only rider to come within 2:30 of Bunel. Holmgren joined Lidl-Trek for the 2024 season on a two-year deal alongside four other then-18-year-olds. Fleur Moors, Isabel Sharp, Felicity Wilson-Haffenden and Holmgren’s sister Ava all signed up for the WorldTour team but have barely been able to grow as riders during the 2024 season. Wilson-Haffenden, Sharp, Moors and Ava Holmgren have done a WWT race each, with Isabella Holmgren focusing most of her season on the mountain bike in preparation for the Olympic Games where she represented Canada in the cross-country event.
How great is it we have the Tour de l’Avenir for women? There are a number of U23 riders on the radar of high-level teams thanks to the race, teams interested in developing the future of the sport. Don’t forget, that quite a few WorldTour teams have devo teams attached to them now. And with the introduction of the ProTeam tier next year there will also be a stepping stone for a lot of these riders to target that isn’t getting thrown into the washing machine on a WorldTour team.
Racing continues…
At the Paralympic Games in Paris!
We’ve got a little break from WorldTour racing this weekend, the women resume their regularly scheduled programming at Tour de Romandie from September 6-8. But the Paralympic Games start next week and with them a bunch of fantastic bike racing!
Schedule road events:
Wed. September 4 Morning session (8:00 CET)
- Men’s ITT T1-2, H1, C1, H2, and C2
- Women’s ITT T1-2, H4-5, C1-3, C5, H1-3, and C4
Wed. September 4 Afternoon session (13:30 CET)
- Men’s ITT C3, H4, H3, C5, C4, H5, and B
- Women’s ITT B
Thur. September 5 @ 9:30 CET
- Men’s Road Races H1-2, H5, H4, and H3
- Women’s Road Races H1-4, and H5
Fri. September 6 @ 9:30 CET
- Men’s Road Races C4-5 and B
- Women’s Road Races C4-5 and B
Sat. September 7 @ 9:30 CET
- Men’s Road Races C1-3 and T1-2
- Women’s Road Races C1-3 and T1-2
- Mixed Team Relay H1-5
Track events start even sooner, on August 29th and run through September 1. Live coverage of the events will be broadcast on NBC in the USA, Channel 4 in the UK, Channel 9 and 9Now in Australia and some events will also be live on YouTube for anyone else.
Wheel Talk Podcast
Gracie Elvin and Matt de Neef are back this week with Abby and Loren to talk Classic Lorient Agglomération. Plus, final takes on the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift! We’re still not over it.
Next week we will try to tackle some listener questions. Submit yours to the Escape Collective Discord (Wheel Talk channel) or send in your own audio diary here!
Obsessions: Loren – her kids 💛, Gracie – her postpartum body 💕, Abby – cooking, specifically cheesy creamed corn, Matt – Ted Lasso
Let’s Discuss
Keyboard warriors coming for the SD Worx-Protime riders and Kasia Niewiadoma.
It all started after the fifth stage of the Tour de France Femmes when Demi Vollering crashed in the final kilometres and ultimately lost the yellow jersey to Kasia Niewiadoma. Vollering could be seen slowly getting to her feet, checking her bike and her body before she climbed back in the saddle and started pedalling to the line. Her teammate Niamh Fisher-Black went down in the same crash and was frantically trying to get moving again. The team car stopped for the Kiwi, but Vollering continued alone. A few kilometres later she was joined by an already-cooked Bredewold who tried but failed to close any time to the group that would be fighting for stage honours.
Vollering crossed the line 1:47 behind her teammate Blanka Vas who won the stage in a sprint against Niewiadoma.
The stage set the scene for the rest of the week and provided ample ammunition for keyboard warriors worldwide to come at not only SD Worx-Protime but also individual riders on the team, mainly Lorena Wiebes who said after the stage she saw something yellow on the ground but didn’t stop.
Cue the online reaction. In this day and age internet bullying is part of everyday life. We see it everywhere; it’s unavoidable, but up to now has been relatively nonexistent in women’s cycling. The people who have been louder have been the fans and supporters of the women’s peloton. Every once in a while some negative comments will be thrown at the riders, but it’s never worth getting your socks in a bunch. But the Tour has opened the door to new fans and new viewers, and with that uptick in attention came the trolls.
It’s one thing to critique a team’s decisions – in fact, it is my job to pick apart tactics and determine if something could have been done differently – but I was sickened to see the backlash against specific riders on SD Worx-Protime, and also against the Tour winner Niewiadoma.
For example, one commenter on Niewiadoma’s Instagram stated that taking the lead after Demi crashed was unsportsmanlike and a disgrace and that Niewiadoma was an unfair winner. Another said, “The best didn’t win,” that the win was stolen and undeserved. One person said they hoped Vollering would torture Niewiadoma in the final stage. A commenter on Wiebes’ Instagram said the winningest woman in the peloton right now should go race gravel (because it’s a solo sport? I guess), and in a different comment said Wiebes would be better off working at McDonald’s.
None of that is critiquing the tactics of the riders, which could be saying that Vollering attacked too early on the final stage (just an example; I don’t think she did), or that Niewiadoma should have tried harder to take the jersey on the fourth stage (also an example, that would have been wasting energy too early in the race, IMO).
No one actually knows what happened within the team during the chaos of the fifth stage, and what was said in the radios to the riders. Ultimately it is the team that is supposed to dictate what riders should do in that situation and to tell their riders what is even happening on the road. Vas said herself she didn’t know Vollering had gone down, so there was clearly a breakdown of communication. But that is hardly the point.
Internet bullying is unacceptable and it saddens me that it became such a big talking point among riders after what was one of the best bike races of all time. A scroll through the SD Worx-Protime team’s social media will have you throwing your phone down in disgust. What’s ironic is the people in charge aren’t seeing those comments, they could not care less about what people on the internet think of their tactics. But the riders see them.
Part of the sport growing and inviting in more fans is also opening up to additional criticism, but in the wake of the Tour, the comments were next level. I am pretty sure I don’t have to tell anyone reading this newsletter to abstain from spewing their negative opinions at the riders, but I felt the need to highlight this issue. There is really no way around it, with the world what it is, this is where we are. And the more fans of the sport the better, in the end. But these riders are just people, most of them are doing what their teams tell them to do, and it’s not on them. All they deserve is praise for their hard work and the entertainment they provide us with.
A picture worth a couple of words
Matt brought up Marianne Vos in the podcast this week, specifically her performance during the sixth stage of the Tour where she spent the day in the break, got dropped on the final climb, chased like it was her last bike race, and finished second in the sprint. She hopped in the break against the next day to secure her lead in the Points Classification and would end up winning it on Sunday for the second time in her career (making for wins in two of three editions of the TdFF). We mentioned Vos on the Daily Femmes podcasts and I wrote about her, but she hardly got enough credit for her fight in the latter stages of the Tour.
Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift’s favourite five-foot friend dropped her new album Short n’ Sweet on Friday, including her third single from the album “Taste”.
Trigger warning! There’s some serious gore. Watch at your own risk.
Until next time!
Last week Lidl-Trek announced the addition of Riejanne Markus for 2025, but they aren’t even close to done. They almost immediately announced the signing of Markus’s current Visma-Lease a Bike teammate Anna Henderson and on Tuesday announced that Emma Norsgaard will also join the team. All three women have signed for the American team through 2027 and will help shape the future of the team post-Elisa Longo Borghini.
Uno-X Mobility was extremely pleased to announce that Ingvild Gåskjenn would join their team in 2025. The Norwegian rider rocked the early season races for Liv AlUla Jayco, finishing third at the Amstel Gold Race and fourth and fifth in two stages of the Vuelta España Femenina. As a Norwegian rider, the Norwegian team is a perfect fit. Uno-X will be keen to continue Gåskjenn’s development as a rider and support her in whatever way they can.
Alright, thank you so much for reading this week’s newsletter! I’ll be back next week, but don’t forget to send us your questions for the next Wheel Talk podcast!
Did we do a good job with this story?