Good day and thank you for opening this week’s Wheel Talk Newsletter. The women’s cycling world has been calm since the announcement of Demi Vollering’s signing with FDJ-Suez and the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift 2025 route announcement so today I’ll feature a chat I had with Elise Chabbey before the Road World Championships in Zurich. The full conversation will be on the Wheel Talk Podcast this week as well.
Wheel Talk
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Off-season continues. This time last week we had more going on than in mid-July but this week things have quieted down with a lot of riders enjoying some fun adventures sans bike. Kasia Niewiadoma enjoyed some delicious-looking food and beach time in Bali, Emma Norsgaard hit up a wedding, Elise Chabbey escaped to the mountains, and Shirin van Anrooij made it through her iliac artery surgery successfully.
The next couple of weeks will fly by and soon riders will be headed to their first team camps of the 2025 season. Some teams are meeting up already before December, to get their riders together before bikes become the center of the universe. We’ve talked before on the podcast, and in this newsletter, about the importance of team building and that all starts at pre-season camps. Until then, team kits, helmets, and bikes will collect some much-needed dust.
Racing Continues …
… in 78 days at the Tour Down Under!
Wheel Talk Podcast
This week is a conversation with Elise Chabbey that took place before the World Championships, after a pretty up-and-down season for Chabbey. We talked about how she came into the sport from kayaking, her time with Canyon-SRAM and her move to FDJ-Suez next season.
Let’s Discuss
How Elise Chabbey found the currents in the peloton. Here’s an excerpt of my Q&A with the “Queen of the Queen of the Mountains.”
Over the years Chabbey has made a name for herself by going in breakaways, attacking whenever possible, and gobbling up QOM points in most major races. She came to cycling from professional kayaking after competing in the 2012 London Olympic Games. Once she made the switch, and while she was still in school full-time, Chabbey rose through the ranks until she eventually signed for Canyon-SRAM in 2021. Chabbey has spent the last four seasons as Kasia Niewiadoma’s right-hand woman, but all of that will change in 2025. Chabbey is set to be one of the key transfers to support Demi Vollering at FDJ-Suez next year, and even though she’s a bit nervous about the change, she is looking forward to a new role within the team with the aim of throwing her hands up in victory more often than she has so far.
Abby Mickey: It has been a bit of a rough season for you, with some bad luck and some crashes. How do you cope with coming back from each of those incidents?
Elise Chabbey: The last few races were really hard for me. First the Giro [d’Italia] crash, it was completely my fault, then the Olympics, it was not my fault. [The crash in the] Tour de France, I actually don’t remember.
In the end, it’s a mix of bad luck, and also maybe me being a bit in a bad position, or, I don’t really know what happened, usually I’m super good in the bunch. I’m quite confident, I’m never afraid. After all of these crashes, I have to say, it was quite hard to come back for [Tour de Romandie] I am really not confident anymore in the bunch. I’m afraid to crash all the time. I think it’s difficult, after so many crashes to get back in it.
In the end, crashes can happen all the time, but it’s just that you get injured and then I started also to think, “Is it worth it to to always risk it in the bunch?” You question yourself a lot. So it was not easy, I have to say.
AM: What do you do to build back that confidence?
EC: I was lucky until now that I didn’t have so many bad crashes, I would say. I always had some, but nothing really serious. I had in [the] Tour de France a really bad concussion also, so that’s also why it was hard to come back. At the end, you just have to spend time in the bunch and really try to forget and do what you know you can do. If you’re in the front it’s fine, but it’s always hard to get there.
AM: Especially these days it seems like the peloton is so much more competitive, even than when you started, it seems like the peloton is even harder to move around in now than it was two years ago.
EC: Because the level is now so high, and every girl in there is able to be in the front. Especially the Tour de France is super hectic all the time because I feel like everybody’s in top shape. Everybody wants to be in the front at the same time, and it’s always super hectic, and that’s why there are so many crashes.
AM: You came to cycling from a more interesting path than a lot of other riders. How do you think kayaking translates to riding a bike?
EC: There are a lot of things that I could take from kayaking to cycling. The National Coach always told me that, because I was always quite fine in the bunch, I never had trouble moving in the bunch, and maybe he said that was because of the movement of the water that I got used to it in kayaking.
The competition, the way of living, this kind of stuff for sure helped me to come directly to a good level in cycling.
AM: How did you decide to hang up your kayak and pick up a bike instead?
EC: I stopped kayaking after the Olympics in 2012 in London because in kayaking you don’t have so much money. I was still a teenager and my parents wanted me to study something and find a job because you cannot live from kayaking. So yeah, then I decided to start medicine and I didn’t have time to train anymore.
In my head, I didn’t want to go back to being an athlete anymore. I just wanted to enjoy my teenage life.
After one year, I was actually quite done with [partying and studying only] and I started to run quite a lot. I directly had quite a good level, and I could integrate running on the Scott international team in trail running. I really enjoyed this year.
Like a lot of runners, I had a fracture of the hip and I couldn’t run anymore for one year, pretty much. And then I could start only with cycling. And that’s how I got into cycling.
AM: You’re moving from Canyon-SRAM, where you’ve spent multiple years, and had a lot of growth in your career, to FDJ-Suez next year. How are you feeling about the move?
EC: It’s a mixed feeling. For sure I’m super excited because it’s a new team. I feel like I can grow maybe as a rider and we’re going to be a super strong team. I really want to try something else, to maybe one day win a big race. I feel like, also I’m getting older, so maybe a nice change is also something that I could do. But also, in a way, I’m a bit sad, because I really enjoyed my four years in Canyon-SRAM.
I have nothing to say bad about the team. I’m leaving for me personally, I wanted to change. Honestly, every time I think about it, I want to cry, because I feel like I [will] miss the girls and the staff. They’re really friends to me and I’m not sure I can find this in another team, but let’s see.
AM: You can tell by watching you race that you have a lot of fun being a part of the racing, being up at the front and attacking all the time, and obviously the joke is that you’re the “Queen of the Queen of Mountains,” going for those jerseys and you can tell just by watching your style that that’s the kind of racing that you love.
EC: I don’t really like just waiting, waiting, waiting, and then following. And yeah, I feel like it’s not really the kind of race I like.
There’s much more in the podcast, which you can access at the link above.
A picture worth a couple of words
Off-season is also Wedding Season. With some time off the bike, a lot of riders plan their weddings for late October and November. A few weeks ago Elisa Balsamo got married to Davide Plebani (Italian track cyclist) and in lieu of a white dress, she wore what might be the most colourful wedding dress … ever. The couple leaned into the colour, which can be seen in the stunning photography work of Sean Hardy.
Taylor Swift corner
“Gray November
I’ve been down since July
Motion capture
Put me in a bad light”
– Taylor Swift
Until next time
A little Tuesday breaking news to end the newsletter: Ceratizit-WNT announced that the team and Cédrine Kerbaol, winner of the Youth Classification at the 2023 Tour de France Femmes and the first French winner of a stage of the newly revamped race have agreed to mutually part ways. Kerbaol is the team’s second-best performer behind Marta Lach who is also departing at the end of the season.
Kerbaol started to turn heads at the 2023 Tour and was one of the breakout stars of the 2024 season, winning Vuelta CV Feminas early in the year and then claiming Durango-Durango in horrendous conditions. She finished off her season with a win at Tre Valli Varesine in early October but by far her best performance to date was her stage 6 win at the Tour de France Femmes.
It’s unclear as of the announcement where Kerbaol will ride in 2025, but no doubt there are multiple teams interested in the 23-year-old Frenchwoman.
Thanks so much for reading this week’s newsletter, if you have any topics you want to hear more about, you can shoot me a message on Instagram @abimickey.
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