Hello! As always thank you for opening this week’s Wheel Talk Newsletter. Over the weekend even more chaotic transfer rumours hit the airwaves with three more big names entering the rumour mill. A few nations have announced their Olympic teams already, with many coming in the next few weeks. And we have a one-weekend break in the WWT calendar this weekend so send in your questions – cycling related or otherwise and via Discord or drop them in the comments here – for the next Wheel Talk Podcast!
The transfer news just will. not. stop.
Normally, it’s not until August at the very earliest – when the transfer window formally opens – that riders are rumoured to be moving teams, but this year has been mad. First with all the SD Worx-Protime transfer drama (Demi Vollering then Marlen Reusser), now three more big names have entered the fray.
Elisa Longo Borghini, the top rider at Lidl-Trek, is rumoured to be leaving the American team at the end of the year to join UAE Team ADQ. At first, it was just a rumour, but Luca Guercilena, General Manager for Lidl-Trek, confirmed over the weekend the Italian champion would leave his team, despite their best efforts to keep her.
The Tour of Flanders winner joined Lidl-Trek when the team was formed in 2019 and quickly became one of its key members. Over the years she has become its star performer, with wins at Paris-Roubaix Femmes, the UAE Tour, a stage at the Giro Donne, the Tour of Britain and more.
The 32-year-old will be joining UAE Team ADQ in the prime of her career, the news comes soon after a top-three finish at the Vuelta Femenina and a strong spring campaign. According to Gazzetta dello Sport, Longo Borghini was impressed with the team’s plans for the future and hopes to become a leader in the team in 2025 and beyond.
With Longo Borghini saying goodbye Lidl-Trek the American team is left with a gaping hole in their roster. They are, allegedly, hoping to fill it with Riejanne Markus, who is rumoured to leave Visma-Lease a Bike along with Anna Henderson at the end of 2024. While Markus and Longo Borghini are very different riders, Markus’ gains in stage racing in the last two years highlight a promising future for the Dutchwoman. She just recently finished second overall at the Vuelta Femenina, ahead of Longo Borghini.
After five years at FDJ-Suez Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig is back on the transfer market. It would be perhaps unsurprising to see her move to a new team, both to switch things up and not to have to compete with Vollering for leadership. With Vollering the main topic of conversation and Uttrup a firm fixture at the French team her potential movements have gone under the radar but on Tuesday l’Equipe linked both Uttrup and Kasia Niewiadoma to SD Worx-Protime.
The move would arguably be an even bigger one than Vollering’s move away from SD Worx-Protime. The team only picked up one rider for the 2024 season, Femke Gerritse. They had quite a few returning riders for this season, but ahead of 2025 most of the team is out of contract. We already know of a few who are leaving or retiring so it makes sense the powerhouse team would need to look around the current WorldTour peloton to rebuild.
Only four riders are currently contracted with SD Worx-Protime for the 2025 season: Gerritse, who signed a two-year, Lotte Kopecky, Lorena Wiebes, and Marie Schreider.
Niewiadoma, who’s been riding for Canyon-SRAM since 2018, started her career on the Dutch Rabo-Liv team. Is there a return to a more Dutch style of doing things in the near future? The Polish rider’s presence at SD Worx-Protime makes perfect sense. Their throw-everything-at-the-wall approach matches Niewiadoma’s seamlessly and they are the main barrier that has kept Niewiadoma from a whole lot of victories over the past five years. To join the team that has been the only one able to best her means Niewiadoma’s La Fleche Wallonne victory is something we are going to see a lot of in 2025. Plus, she was teammates with now SD Worx-Protime DS Anna van der Breggen back in the day, the connections are all there.
But for now, we will have to wait until August for all of this to be confirmed and to find out who else is going to be moving house in the new season.
Racing Continues…
On June 6th at the Women’s Tour of Britain!
More information including the route and contenders will be in next week’s newsletter.
Wheel Talk Podcast
We had a full cast for this week’s episode! Matt de Neef and Matilda Raynolds joined me, Loren, and Gracie to revisit the draft, discuss how we feel about our picks now and make one swap ahead of the second chunk of the season. We also talked briefly about Elisa Longo Borghini leaving Lidl-Trek, the RideLondon Classique, and Lizzy Banks’s bombshell news last week.
Let’s Discuss
Olympic team numbers.
We’re getting closer to the Olympic Games in Paris and now is when nations start to announce their teams. So far only two nations have officially announced who will represent them in Paris, but many riders are currently sitting on the edge of their saddles, phone notifications full blast, waiting to hear from their national federations.
🇳🇿 New Zealand: Kim Cadzow (ITT and RR) and Niamh Fisher-Black (RR)
🇫🇷 France: Audrey Cordon-Ragot (ITT and RR), Juliette Labous (ITT and RR) and Victoire Berteau (RR)
🇺🇸 United States: Taylor Knibb (ITT) and Chloe Dygert (ITT) (RR TBD)
One of the big things to understand with Olympic team selection is the numbers. This year is a little different because the International Olympic Committee (IOC) increased the number of women who can compete in the road race. The maximum team size of four didn’t change, but where there used to be 67 women lining up; this time there will be 90. (We could have an entirely different conversation about this but I’ll leave it for another time).
Team size is determined long before rider selections are made. The way the Olympic peloton is decided is based on the five highest-scoring riders of each nation from October 19, 2022, to October 17th 2023, pretty much a one-year period. So riders and national federations knew already last October how many riders they would be able to send to compete in the road race and time trial.
It gets a heck of a lot more complicated when you dig into the logistics of athlete allotment which covers all cycling disciplines – road, mountain, BMX, and track. A nation can, for example, only take one rider from another discipline for a track event, but can move any number of riders from other disciplines over to the road (as long as they meet the UCI eligibility for that discipline). That is almost a completely different conversation and will factor heavily into the USA’s road team for Paris. (See Joe Lindsey’s interview with Taylor Knibb here.)
While we wait to see who will be lining up in Paris to fight for gold, let’s run over how many riders each team is allowed.
Netherlands: RR – 4, ITT – 2
Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, Poland: RR – 4, ITT – 1
Great Britain, France, Australia, Germany, Denmark: RR – 3, ITT – 2
United States, Austria, Solvenia: RR – 2, ITT – 2
Canada, New Zealand, Spain, South Africa, Norway, Uzbekistan, Cuba: RR – 2, ITT – 1
China, Russia, Finland, Ukraine, Colombia: RR – 1, ITT – 1
And then a list of countries only have one spot in the road race and none in the TT:
Sweden, Hong Kong, Czech Republic, Rwanda, Thailand, Ireland, Japan, Luxembourg, Belarus, Mauritius, Brazil, Chile, South Korea, Slovakia, Namibia, Algeria, Serbia, Israel, Portugal, Hungary, Lithuania, UAE, Zimbabwe, Vietnam, Burkina Faso, Cyprus, Indonesia, Nigeria, Kazakhstan, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Eritrea, Malaysia, Estonia, Egypt, Taiwan, Latvia, Bermuda, Paraguay, Panama, Guatemala, Morocco, Ecuador, Honduras, Trinidad & Tobago, Dominican Republic, Uruguay, Mexico, Greece, Iran, Mongolia, Bulgaria, Philippines, El Salvador, Croatia, Tunisia, Iceland, Romania, Turkey, Pakistan, Bolivia, Nicaragua, North Macedonia, Afghanistan, Singapore, Bosnia and Herzegovina, India, Belize, Benin, Jamaica, Eswatini, Kosovo, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, Azerbaijan, Cameroon, Lesotho, Ghana, Anguilla, and Sint Maarten
Of the nations with the full four-rider allotment the Dutch, Italians, and maybe even Belgians are the hardest to predict. For the Dutch and Italians, the list of potentials is long, even if there are a few sure things like Elisa Longo Borghini, bronze medal winner in both the Toyko and Rio de Janeiro Games. The other three riders are still up in the air.
For the Dutch, they’ve always had the strongest team no matter what. Based on ranking you’d think Vollering, Wiebes, and Marianne Vos are going to be tapped but Shirin van Anrooij and Riejanne Markus have both made strong cases as has Ellen van Dijk for the time trial.
For Poland, you’d think Niewiadoma would lead a team containing Daria Pikulik but there are a number of riders equal in ranking and performance for the other spots.
Obviously, Lotte Kopecky will be racing the road race in addition to competing on the track for Belgium.
Some of the one-spot nations also only have one rider who would be able to race: Teniel Campbell for Trinidad & Tobago, for example.
This process of nations slowly filling in the Olympic road race start list is an interesting one and one we will probably keep bringing up on the Wheel Talk podcast. A lot of athletes compete their whole careers just hoping to be tapped but never get the selection, while others aren’t worried about their place on the team, but are instead focused on the result at the end. Stay tuned, this is only the beginning.
A picture worth a couple of words
World-class athletes, they’re just like us!
Taylor Swift segment
The Eras Tour continued in Lisbon, Portugal over the weekend with Taylor Swift set to take over Madrid this coming weekend. The opener for this leg of the tour is Paramore, led by Hayley Williams.
If you know anything about Swift’s early career you’ll know that Williams and Swift became friends years and years ago when Swift’s mom approached Williams at an event and asked her to befriend her daughter who was new to the industry. Now the two are touring together, but unlike when Phoebe Bridgers opened for Swift in the US they have yet to play their song Castles Crumbling off Speak Now (Taylor’s Version).
Until next time!
Speaking of Olympic teams, Julie Leth has some very adorable help in her prep for the Madison in Paris.
Thanks for reading this week’s Wheel Talk Newsletter. I’ll be back next week, but in the meantime, don’t forget to drop any questions for the podcast in the comments!
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