Hello and thank you for opening this week’s Wheel Talk Newsletter! I hope everyone is having a lovely off-season and either enjoying some cyclocross or taking some time away from the sport to really build up some anticipation for next year. There was a tiny bit of news since the last newsletter, including some last-minute transfer updates. Let’s dive in.
Wheel Talk
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Most of the riders are still enjoying their offseasons, but at this point, with team camps right around the corner, it’s only a matter of days until they all hop back on their bikes for some winter-time training. Lizzie Deignan enjoyed some quality time with her family; Elisa Longo Borghini and her husband Jacopo Longo Borghini Mosca celebrated their one-year wedding anniversary on top of a mountain; Neve Bradbury tucked into some books in the sun; Lorena Wiebes took a trip to Dubai; Lonneke Uneken went skiing (a girl after my own heart); and Alison Jackson is still riding, but only to find the best croissant in Vancouver.
Four to six weeks off the bike may sound like a lot, but the time really flies by for these women. Whether it’s enjoying an extended period of time at home with friends and family, taking the opportunity to see the world without having to lug around a bike bag, or hunting for some delicious pastries, they make the most of their time away from training and racing. Before they know it they’ll once again be living out of suitcases in weird hotel rooms calling their families on the phone instead of seeing them in person – and we can enjoy keeping up with their antics via social media.
Racing Continues…
… in 71 days at the Tour Down Under!
Wheel Talk Podcast
This week I had the pleasure of chatting with Geerike Schreurs, more commonly known as Gee, about her move from racer to soigneur to gravel pro to a WorldTour contract with SD Worx-Protime in 2025. We chat through her longstanding relationship with Anna van der Breggen, why she decided to walk away from her career as a soigneur with Lidl-Trek in the hopes of a career racing on the gravel scene, and more. Gee has been around for long enough to see the sport change in ways she couldn’t have imagined, and has a very unconventional path to the pro ranks on the road.
Let’s Discuss
Geerike Schreurs’ unique road to a WorldTour contract.
Nearly 11 years after she walked away from racing bikes, Geerike Schreurs signed her first WorldTour contract. She couldn’t walk away from cycling altogether, but when Schreurs decided racing wasn’t for her in 2013 after riding for Sengers Ladies Team in Belgium for two years, she thought any attempt at making her cycling dreams come true was over. Next year, she will rejoin the same team she rode from in 2011 albeit in a very different landscape than the one she left.
She had joined the sport in 2010 from volleyball thanks to her then-boyfriend’s sister, none other than Anna van der Breggen. They were racing together in the Netherlands before Van der Breggen left Europe for a year in Ghana. Schreurs kept racing in her absence, now for Dolmans Landscaping, the team that would eventually become SD Worx-Protime, but she wasn’t loving it.
“I was there by myself and I was completely lost,” Schreurs said of her 2011 season. “I had no idea what to do. I’d never raced outside of the Netherlands, I had no idea about how you work together or work you do as a teammate. It was a bit of a rough year for me.”
“Obviously I didn’t get another contract; nowadays it’s so much better because there’s so much more help from teams. It’s so much more professional. At that time you didn’t get any money they just sort of said ‘OK, you go to the race and do what you have to do’.”
When Van der Breggen returned, Schreurs joined the Belgian team Sengers Ladies Team alongside her former teammate, but things weren’t much better than they had been the year before. The team folded at the end of the 2013 season, and while Van der Breggen was picked up by Rabo Liv, one of the best teams at the time, Schreurs returned to “normal life,” leaving behind any dream she had of racing.
“Anna is just so talented she got picked up by Rabobank after the team folded, and I wasn’t sure what to do. I was quite lost, in my personal life as well, and I thought this is not going to work out,” Schreurs explained.
“That’s when I decided to quit and didn’t follow the dream I had.”
But Schreurs couldn’t stay away from the circus for long. She decided to take a one-year sports massage course and landed a soigneur gig thanks to her friend Kirsten Wild. That job led to a position with Hitec Products, then Cylance, and eventually Trek-Segafredo. With the American team, Schreurs found stability that wasn’t there before, a professional environment with multiple soigneurs to carry the weight of the team.
“When I started [at Cylance] it was just me looking after six riders,” Schreurs explained. “Sometimes I think, ‘How did I do that?’ When I joined [Trek-Segafredo] that changed a little bit because they had the resources from the men. They have doctors, nutritionists, and everything. For me, that was an eye-opener that it’s getting so much more professional.
“To see how much support the riders get, maybe the riders don’t realize where they came from. It’s sometimes good to look back to 2012 when we didn’t have a bus, you just had a little van and you sat outside under a tent, rain or no rain. I’ve seen the development professionally in the sport.”
Schreurs isn’t one to stay sedentary, and while working as a soigneur she continued to be active, dabbling in trail running and eventually gravel racing. It was riding on the dirt that she found her calling.
“I was already beginning of last year doubting how long I wanted to keep doing the soigneur life, I wanted to keep developing myself and get better in other things.”
She hinted to Trek that she wanted to try racing, instead of being on the sidelines, but the team didn’t bite.
“If I want to change something it needs to come from me or I need to accept how it is.”
So she quit.
At first the path forward wasn’t clear, of course, sponsors were interested, gravel was a growing market and Schreurs had shown promise, but in October when Van der Breggen was visiting Schreurs her future started to fall into place.
“I had it in my head I would love to become a full-time gravel racer, but I didn’t speak it out loud because I was too afraid of what people would think and then Anna said to me, ‘Why are you not going to do gravel races? You’re pretty good at it,'” Schreurs said with a laugh.
Van der Breggen went to Specialized and the bike brand was keen. Then Danny Stam and SD Worx-Protime got on board to support Schreurs as well. By December she was at team camp with the road team.
When Van der Breggen picked up Schreurs for team camp she had to remind her that during mealtimes she had to sit with the riders, not the staff.
“I felt so insecure, and a bit scared. I worked with Trek so those are my riders, I had a close relationship with all of them. But of course, you see [other riders] in the hallways.”
“The first time it was a little awkward but they were so welcoming. They welcomed me with open arms.”
When the team kitted up and went for a ride Schreurs found herself surrounded by legends.
“The World Champion, the Tour de [France Femmes] winner, the European champion; this is honestly the best team, the best riders are here.”
Schreurs dove headfirst into racing gravel in 2024. She won The Gralloch Gravel race in the U.K., part of the UCI Gravel Series, and placed second at Unbound Gravel, arguably the most famous race on the scene. Van der Breggen was with her for Unbound, working as her director/helper at the American race. Schreurs was aware, quite early on, that the former road World Champion was planning a return to the professional peloton in 2025.
At some point, a plan was hatched for Schreurs to join the road team with her longtime friend. She would continue racing gravel, but would also have the option of slotting into the road team as support.
With all the change she’s seen in the sport, and in herself, Schreurs is sure she will have a better time racing for SD Worx-Protime in 2025 than she did for the team’s predecessor in 2011.
“I was really hard on myself,” she said of her early time in the sport. “Then I actually look at it and it’s much more a team sport than I thought. Even if you don’t finish the race, you could have done your job and you’re appreciated by your teammates; there’s always a whole story behind that. I think seeing that I started to realize, you cannot win every race, but don’t put yourself down if you didn’t finish the race or it didn’t go how it wanted to go.”
Her gravel season didn’t end the way she wanted; an injury sidelined her from the World Championships, a race she had been looking forward to not only for any chance at results but also to suss out how her form was compared to the road professionals who lined up.
But she ended her 2024 season with a lot to look forward to.
“I’m excited for the training camps, to see where I’m standing now,” Schreurs said. “I hadn’t done intensity for almost 12 years and they were so fast, but I love it.
“I would love to work hard for them, but that’s how I am. I like to work for someone else, I like to be there for someone else. That motivates me.”
What motivates Schreurs is exactly what SD Worx-Protime needs next season. In addition to leadership losses in Demi Vollering and Marlen Reusser, they are losing a couple of key domestiques like Christine Majerus, and with her strength, Schreurs will hopefully fit the hole left behind. And the plan is that racing on the road will also help with her gravel ambitions.
“I’m not so bad at riding in the bunch, but also making tactical decisions, personally mentally it will be good for me to be back on the road,” she said. “It’s way more dynamic and it’s much faster so I think it can also help with training and to perform better in the gravel races.”
The main goal remains gravel, but who knows where the future will take Geerike Schreurs.
“It took 12 years to get a WorldTour contract and go again where I started, and be back with Anna on the team.”
A picture worth a couple of words
Some familiar faces alongside Gee in this throwback pic?
Taylor Swift corner
On this day in 2021, Taylor Swift released the All Too Well (10 Minute Version) (Taylor’s Version) (From the Vault) music video/short film.
There is a lot of Swiftie lore around All Too Well the original version… It was co-written with Liz Rose, a longtime collaborator of Swift, and produced by Swift and Nathan Chapman (another Swift regular) for the 2012 Red album.
As legend goes, Swift stormed into a rehearsal in February 2011 and started to ad-lib alongside a four-chord guitar riff while her band backed her. The Speak Now Tour sound guy recorded the session and Swift’s mom kept the CD. Swift claims the song was the hardest to write for the album because she had to filter through everything she wanted to put into the track. Rose was the one who helped Swift cut the track down and it was Rose who let slip in an interview that the song had originally been 10-15 minutes long. The original version was still the longest track on Red at 5:28, but Swifties latched onto Rose’s comment.
All Too Well became a cult anthem, much to Swift’s surprise. Fans of Swift called for the singer to release the full-length version from the moment they knew there was one, and when Swift set out to re-record the album to be released in 2021 she included a 10:13 version of the track.
I recently shared the short film starring Sadie Sink and Dylan O’Brien and I’ve shared both the album version and the acoustic version here but I’ll never stop sharing this song. For me the 10 minutes it takes to listen to it fly by. I could measure time in All Too Well (10 Minute Version)s. Here is Swift performing the song on Saturday Night Live on November 13, 2021:
Until next time
Thanks for taking the time to read this week’s newsletter! See you next week.
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