There was a clear goal for Movistar ahead of the 2023 Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift: pilot Annemiek van Vleuten to a second overall victory in two years.
She won the race in 2022, along with two stages, riding for the Spanish team. And even though things didn’t go according to plan by the time the race reached the final stage in Pau, there had been a plan to lean on. One year on, and without the former world champion, the Spanish team has a different plan for the eight-stage race; stage hunting.
Even when their entire goal was to get Van Vleuten into the yellow jersey and keep it until Pau, they still won two stages of the Tour with two different riders. To focus on only winning stages entirely puts a different kind of pressure on the team when compared with going for GC, but it’s a pressure the team will enjoy taking on.
One year ago Liane Lippert was the clear path for Movistar once they’d lost Van Vleuten. The German rider was to be Van Vleuten’s successor when it came to the general classification, but an off-season injury threw her 2024 season into disarray. The 2023 German national champion suffered a stress fracture in her right hip that kept her out of the peloton until the Vuelta España Femenina in April. Winner of the second stage of the 2023 Tour, it took until the Giro d’Italia for Lippert to be back on the top step. She won the sixth stage but did not feature in the GC after abandoning the final stage.
In the future, Lippert will no doubt be Movistar’s hopes for a top GC result, but for this year’s Tour, her form just isn’t where it needs to be to challenge the defending champion Demi Vollering.
So Movistar will do what any team does when they don’t have a clear GC option. They will do the exact opposite of what they did in the last two editions. Their team will be on the attack, looking for opportunities, hunting for stages.
Lippert is in good form enough to target a stage or two, she proved that at the Giro, but the team has another rider who won a stage of the Tour in 2023.
Emma Norsgaard, who went into the Olympic road race with high hopes, comes to the race with fantastic form and lofty goals. The Danish rider used to be a sprinter but decided to adapt her riding style in 2022 to better benefit her team all around. The change meant that she is a better sprinter than most, but can also get herself over the hills that purer sprinters cannot.
Norsgaard won the sixth stage of the Tour last year by jumping in the day-long break that managed to outsmart the sprinter’s team and arrive at the line mere metres before the peloton. Her breakaway companions were caught, but she had enough of a gap that she still beat Charlotte Kool and Lotte Kopecky to the line.
Movistar’s Canadian champion Olivia Baril is another strong rider who will do well on stages like the fourth, fifth and sixth. She is less familiar to the peloton than Lippert and Norsgaard, having only started racing in the WorldTour in 2022. But she’s a rider who has already turned heads with wins at one-days and stage races alike.
Tactical master Floortje Mackaij will be thrilled with the change of tactics. The Dutch rider is well known for taking advantage of weather conditions and the rest of the peloton to get up the road in crucial moves. She hasn’t won many races recently, instead adopting the role of team captain to help organize the team for the greater goal, but Movistar’s approach to this Tour will mean more fun for Mackaij, and more opportunities, which is exactly what she needs to succeed.
Fun is what Movistar is looking forward to this year. Throwing out the script and racing with their hearts. Without a horse in the GC race, every stage is up for grabs, so hang onto your hats, because this is the Tour de France and anything can happen.
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