We are barely six months into the Olympic cycle so it’s far from peak track season, but this week’s European Track Championships have provided plenty of talking points – as have the Oceania equivalent which also wrapped up this weekend – not to mention reasons to be excited for the near future of everyone’s favourite velodrome-based theatre.
On the very first night there was the unseating of the Dutch men’s sprint team who lost out on the title for the first time in seven participations, Harrie Lavreysen's fresh formation losing to high-flying French trio Timmy Gillion, Rayan Helal and Sébastian Vigier. There was success for a number of road pros too, with Germany's Tim Torn Teutenberg (Lidl-Trek) winning the elimination a little over a week on from a brilliant Australian campaign, and Italy's Martina Fidanza (Visma-Lease a Bike) reclaimed the European scratch title after five years.
Second to the Italian, though, was none other than Lorena Wiebes.
The Dutch sprinter was, like Fidanza, just back from the UAE Tour, where Wiebes had won three stages and the points classification – if you missed the race, Matt de Neef discussed the major talking points here at Escape Collective.
There was a great deal of anticipation leading into the UAE Tour, the crucial first gauge of where everyone’s at as a new season begins, the sprinters in particular. Wiebes was joined on the start line by top-ranked fast-finishers Elisa Balsamo (Lidl-Trek) and Chiara Consonni (Canyon-SRAM zondacrypto) – both also regulars in the velodrome – and Charlotte Kool (Picnic PostNL), a former teammate who is usually considered the best possible threat to Wiebes’ dominance. Had any of them got faster, or more consistent, over the winter months?
The answer: Nope.
Wiebes won, won and won again, making it look easy every time and leaving daylight between herself and second place. She even tried something new at the finish of stage 4, if a fresh celebration counts.
Now, of course, she couldn’t possibly be getting bored of winning, that’s not how professional athletes work, but nevertheless, Wiebes is working on a new project – she has been since last October when three days after closing out her road season with the Simac Ladies Tour (three stage wins and points jersey, obvs), the Dutch sprinter headed to Denmark to make her debut at the Track World Championships.
“It was so close after Simac that you can have only a few days of rest, only spinning the legs,” Wiebes told Cycling Weekly back in October. “For me, it’s quite an ideal preparation. I didn’t have to do any training anymore, just keep the shape and continue to the next event.”
The 25-year-old only signed up for one event, the scratch race. It’s perhaps the most easy to understand if not most self-explanatory of track events, being essentially a straight-up bike race: the first rider across the line after however many (40) laps is the winner. So easily transferable for a rider coming straight off a road racing block.
And after just 12 minutes and 2 seconds, Wiebes was a world champion for the first time in her career in any discipline, beating three-time Olympic champ Jennifer Valente of the USA (twice Omnium and once team pursuit champ) and Olympic medalist Ally Wollaston (New Zealand and FDJ-Suez), who was about to become world champion in both elimination and omnium.
Naturally, a big question rose up as Wiebes traded oranje for the rainbow jersey. While the scratch race isn’t an Olympic event in isolation, it is included in the omnium, a four-race event comprising scratch, tempo, elimination and points races, with points gathered in each round that all count towards an overall tally. Consistency is key, you don't have to win all or any events, but it helps.
So: might Wiebes target track racing at the Los Angeles Olympic Games in 2028?
Wiebes said at the time that it was “possible.” It’s not like she’s picked up track racing on a whim, she’s a multiple national champion on the boards, and the road race in California is expected to be too hilly to suit a sprinter, so why not. Even so, Wiebes has been taking it one step at a time.
“The omnium event is completely different to only the scratch race,” Wiebes went on, speaking from Denmark in October. “We have to see what’s coming these next couple of years. Maybe I first need to ride a full omnium to fully decide what I want.
“I don’t really like the elimination race. That’s a big thing [she laughed]. I have four years to get used to it, so we will see what the future brings. It’s somewhere on my mind.”
Cut to 14th February 2025, and job done. She’s raced her first omnium, and won, in a manner unsurprising to anyone who follows her on the road.
It was not completely plain sailing, but Wiebes got things underway perfectly with victory in the introductory scratch race. 13th in the tempo (won by Norway's Anita Stenberg) put the Dutch rider at a disadvantage, but she was back in contention thanks to victory in the third-round elimination – the discipline she said she dislikes – with the more-consistent Maddie Leech (Great Britain) ascending to the top spot overall before the final points race.
The pair stayed tantalisingly close throughout the finale. A determined Wiebes started taking points from the first sprint, but Leech then bit back and extended her lead beyond the crucial ten, until the penultimate sprint where Wiebes took maximum points and kept hope alive. Leech was closing in on the title, but a horribly timed late crash for the Brit left Wiebes free to go all out in the final sprint – though she was reportedly unaware that it was Leech who fell until afterwards.
Wiebes quite simply had to win, and win she did. Thanks to the ten points scored at the finish, she and Leech ended the omnium equal on 114 points, but based on countback, the Dutch rider scored her first European title on the track, and in an Olympic discipline to boot.
It’s worth reenforcing the fact that we’re at a weird point in the calendar and there are a number of riders out of action or contention for a variety of reasons, but even so, there’s surely little question now as to whether Wiebes will continue to spread her objectives across road and track.
Back in October, she said, “We have to see if it’s possible with the road programme, of course … It’s possible, but you have to find a good balance for it.”
After finding out she’d taken victory on Friday evening, she said much the same thing to NOS, only this time, it sounds like there’s some planning and goal-setting behind what she says: “As long as my road qualities do not suffer, my team is fine with it.”
Her team SD Worx-Protime does of course already have a prolific track racer on their books in Lotte Kopecky (she sat out the European champs for the first time since 2021). Though combining road and track has not had the desired results for the Belgian at the Olympics – she was fourth in the omnium in Paris, the same result she attained in the ITT days earlier – Kopecky has brought home 14 medals at World and European track competitions since joining the team, including nine golds. And she's shown no signs that she might be spreading herself thin in all that time.
Wiebes has now won three championship medals, two of them gold, inside four months. Who would bet against her adding many many more?
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