Wow the end of 2024 is coming up fast! Soon we will get to see the biggest transfers decked out in their new threads, riding new bikes and making new goals. It will definitely take some time to adjust to some of the swaps, not only for us but for the riders themselves as they navigate new relationships with teammates and new ambitions from management.
Wheel Talk
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First things first
Lots of little tidbits to get us started this week, from a meeting between the UCI, AIOCC, CPP, CPA and the AIGCP to some interesting insight from the Danish national team.
Let’s kick things off with a meeting that took place in Nice at the end of November between most of the major organizations involved in cycling. Topics on the table included climate change, the new three-tier system in the women’s peloton starting in January, SafeR (the safety council launched in 2023 by all the above groups), and medical updates that included pregnancy in women’s cycling.
In total, there were 160 people present for the meeting including the major names in managing cycling – Brent Copeland (AIGCP, or pro teams association), Christian Prudhomme (AIOCC – the group of major race organizers), Adam Hansen and Alessandra Cappellotto of the CPA riders’ union, and of course David Lappartient (UCI).
While there was no singular news of note in the press release, the meeting is interesting in terms of seeing what exactly the UCI thinks are the most pressing issues in women’s cycling at the moment, and who should be involved in the future of the sport.
Relating to women’s teams who have applied for ProTeam status, the UCI’s release stated seven teams have applied, which we knew already, but didn’t mention if any or all of those seven have been granted ProTeam status. That news should come out any day now.
A few riders were there in person, including Lidl-Trek’s Shirin van Anrooij who accepted the UCI’s Best Young Rider of 2024 award.
One of the topics discussed was the upcoming road World Championships in Rwanda, which brings us to another bit of news from last week. The Danish national team have already said they will not be sending any Junior or U23 riders to Rwanda to race the event. Reasons for skipping include finances and the fact that the race will be at altitude and thus require additional preparation for athletes.
“The Danish Cycling Union has made the difficult decision that the Danish U19 and U23 national teams will not participate in the 2025 Road Cycling World Championships in Rwanda,” the statement said.
While the Danish team already opted not to send a junior team to Australia for the 2022 Worlds, the news is fascinating because 2025 will see the first-ever stand-alone women’s U23 event. Currently, there aren’t any U23 Danish women within the top-30 in the UCI’s U23 ranking.
Morten Bennekou, the elite manager of Danish cycling, said in a statement that the decision not to send Junior or U23 teams to Rwanda doesn’t mean they will not be sending teams to other international World Championships (possibly referring to Montreal in 2026 and Abu Dhabi in 2028).
The high cost of sending a team to Rwanda in September is top of the list for a lot of nations, especially smaller European ones. Reports of inflated accommodation costs, for example, have been discussed. Word on the street is the trip to Rwanda will be more costly than the 2022 Worlds in Australia, so Denmark might not be the only nation without the resources to send a full team.
Racing Continues…
… in 50 days at the Tour Down Under!
However, in case you missed the opening World Cup (cross-country skiing) weekend in Ruka, Finland the series continues this weekend in Lillehammer, Norway. Starting with a 10 km Classic time trial on Friday, then a freestyle sprint on Saturday, and finally a 20 km skiathlon (classic/free) on Sunday. Last weekend was VERY good. You can catch all the action on MAX, Discovery+, or skiandsnowboard.live depending where you’re located.
Wheel Talk Podcast
One of my favourite off-season recordings will come out this week – a chat between myself, Loren and Georgie Howe. Howe rose incredibly fast to the WorldTour level, and after two crazy years with Liv AlUla Jayco will be stepping away from the professional peloton but not away from her bike. She learned a heck of a lot in her transition from rowing to cycling, and her perspective on the sport is something everyone should hear.
More information about the study Georgie mentioned from the 2023 Tour de France Femmes can be found here.
Matt de Neef also wrote a story about Georgie’s rapid rise in cycling here.
Let’s Discuss
… Major faces returning to the women’s WorldTour. Pauline Ferrand-Prévot and Anna van der Breggen aren’t messing around when it comes to 2025, but their goals won’t come easy.
Even without the addition of two legends of women’s cycling the 2025 season was shaping up to be one that defines the future of the sport. Throw in Van der Breggen and Ferrand-Prévot and there will be no limit on what we may watch unfold next season.
While Van der Breggen has been characteristically coy about her ambitions in 2025, Ferrand-Prévot has not. Immediately after winning MTB Gold at the Paris Olympics, she was already stating that the Tour de France Femmes would be her big target for 2025, and why wouldn’t it be? As a Frenchwoman, to win the yellow jersey, especially in this iteration of the race, would be the highest honour. Over the weekend Ferrand-Prévot doubled down on this goal.
“I signed here for three years and I want to bring out the best version of myself, to see if I can try to win the Tour de France. That is the main goal for those three seasons,” she said during a press event for her Visma-Lease a Bike team. “If I wasn’t convinced that I could do it, I wouldn’t have taken this step.”
It’s no secret that Ferrand-Prévot will be riding into a completely different sport than the one she left. Of course, the general idea is the same: Pedal bike fast, win race. But women’s cycling has come a long way since she left her skinny tyres behind in 2018. The Frenchwoman knows this, and her experience racing the road race in Zurich in September was only a taste of what’s to come.
“The level is also much higher. I rode the World Championships in Zurich, but I dropped out after two hours of racing. I saw more of that race on TV than I did myself. Immediately after the start, the throttle was wide open,” Ferrand-Prévot said.
“After an hour, I felt that my legs had completely exploded. It is a completely different sport now.”
That experience hasn’t diminished her desire to not only race the Tour but take home the “grand prix” next summer.
“I will have to work hard and the competition is also very strong,” she said. “But when I look at my power data, I know that I am a good WorldTour rider. It is a matter of time before I can ride well in a peloton again, study the races and really return to the road.
“For me, it is good to take it step by step. Let me say that this course is good for me and makes the transition a bit easier. The mix between short slopes and longer climbs should suit me well. I am curious to see how far I can get and what I need to work on to be the best.”
Elsewhere in the world Van der Breggen quietly prepares for her own return to the peloton, and while Ferrand-Prévot has a leg up fitness-wise since she’s been dominating the mountain bike cross-country circuit for some years, Van der Breggen has been as close to the women’s peloton as a person can be without being physically in it.
Even before the official announcement that Van der Breggen would hop back on the bike the former World Champion was already finding her way back to fitness. Pre-riding Classics courses with her SD Worx-Protime riders and dabbling in some gravel events helped ease her back into form.
She’s not one to put a target on her back, nor does she need to. Van der Breggen’s presence in the peloton will be felt from day one, but unlike Ferrand-Prévot the Dutchwoman hasn’t said exactly what her goals are in 2025. Assuming she would be targeting the Tour, at the very least to support Lotte Kopecky, wouldn’t be the most wild call to make, but her actions point to other goals.
Last week Van der Breggen was spotted in Rwanda pre-riding the Worlds course for 2025. She was with the men’s national team coach Koos Moerenhout and the technical director for the Dutch cycling federation Wilbert Broekhuizen. She wasn’t there solely to see the course, but she will be one of the few riders (another is South African Ashleigh Moolman Pasio) who will be able to recon the course months before the event.
The main reason we were here is because the KNWU has a partnership with the aid organization Right To Play,” Van der Breggen said of the trip. “Right To Play is starting a campaign Power to Pedals and we are here to launch the campaign. The goal is to help get children on bikes, especially girls. I think that is especially nice. Women often have even less chance to do that kind of thing.”
On the course, she said the 15 km circuit containing four climbs is “a lot.”
“We did study it online, but I was very curious. It already seemed like a tough course and it really is. There is not a flat metre here. It’s all steep climbs, both inside and outside the city. It’s a tough course, but that’s just fun. Does it suit me? If you’re in shape, yes! If I can get back to my old level, it’s a suitable course.”
That both women want another shot at road racing glory speaks volumes of what road cycling can offer women right now, but they will be up against some of the best the sport has ever seen. Lotte Kopecky will no doubt have her eyes on the Tour next year, having missed the French Grand Tour in 2024. Demi Vollering will be out for blood after losing the race by only four seconds and all the drama that surrounded the loss. And defending yellow jersey winner Kasia Niewiadoma will have her work cut out for her when it comes to replicating the incredible performance she displayed in 2024.
The big 5?
How will Van der Breggen and Ferrand-Prévot stack up against the other three, not to mention a handful of riders hot on their heels? Only time will tell. But if we look at their past performances, chances are they’ll come pretty close.
When she left road cycling, Ferrand-Prévot wasn’t the rider who won the World Championships in Ponferrada, Spain in 2014. But since then she has reached a new level in the mountain bike world. A multi-day stage race will be a different type of effort than what she’s used to, but as she said, the course is good for her. The short climbs that pepper the first handful of stages will be her bread and butter. It’s the longer climbs at the end of a long week that might see her chances slip.
As for Van der Breggen, she was still at the top of the sport when she hung up her bike. And according to reports, she never really stopped. She kept riding, and more importantly, she knows exactly what it takes to win a Grand Tour and to win the Tour de France Femmes specifically. She coached Vollering to victory in 2023, after all.
Kopecky’s development as a GC threat hit its peak at the Giro this year when she narrowly lost the race to Elisa Longo Borghini, but the Belgian woman has only gotten better and better with time. She may well take the jersey early in the race and only have to defend it, and if she has Van der Breggen on her side that’s all the worse for SD Worx-Protime’s competitors. Can Kopecky actually win the Tour? Probably. Will there be a power struggle between her and Van der Breggen like there was between Kopecky and Vollering? Probably not.
Vollering will go into next year’s Tour as a favourite, after winning the 2023 edition and narrowly missing out on the 2024 edition. Her form is not up for debate – that is, whether or not she is physically capable of winning the race. She’s proven she is the best climber in the peloton right now. What is less known is how FDJ-Suez will be able to support her. Looking at their lineup, they may be able to provide better support for Vollering than Visma-Lease a Bike is for Ferrand-Prévot. But how Vollering will be impacted by the change of scenery, coaching staff, and management is up in the air.
Niewiadoma is perhaps the odd woman out here, but she’s shown over the past two seasons that she isn’t afraid to buckle down and do the work required to be among the best. Her determination at this year’s Tour, and all season, will only spur her on to greater heights in the future and she has one of the strongest teams in the peloton behind her next year with Canyon-SRAM.
It’s way too early to try to figure out who is going to win the Tour in 2025, and there are a few more interesting contenders than the five mentioned here, but with Ferrand-Prévot’s statements in mind, the question is a fun one to follow down the rabbit hole.
A picture worth a couple of words
The view most pros are looking at these days. Pre-season kilometres in the legs.
Taylor Swift corner
The Eras Tour is officially coming to an end this coming weekend with three shows in Vancouver, Canada, but the Eras Tour Film will live on forever (hopefully with some additional content coming soon … Swift has been spotted with a film crew at a few recent shows and we’re yet to get The Tortured Poets Department set, film edition).
Until Next Time
Thank you for reading! I’ll be back next week.
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