Sunday’s second stage of the Tour de France Femmes always looked the most likely of the race’s nine days to conclude in a bunch sprint. In that regard, there were no surprises by the lakefront in Geneva, and there was no surprise over who crossed the line first, either.
The 148km stage played host to Lorena Wiebes‘ seventh career stage win at the Tour, further extending a record she extended in Lausanne on Saturday.
The Dutchwoman, clearly the best sprinter in the world, launched well clear of Elisa Balsamo and Marianne Vos with almost 300 metres to run and soon had her hands in the air, celebrating her 133rd career victory.
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Wiebes is not quite a Jekyll-and-Hyde figure, but on the bike she’s a relentless winning machine, all killer instinct and ruthlessness. That persona is a stark contrast to the mild-mannered and softly-spoken woman when she’s away from her S-Works Tarmac SL8.
“She’s an absolute killer. She’s addicted to winning, I think,” was how SD Worx-Protime directeur sportif Danny Stam described her to Cyclingnews after the stage.
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Shortly afterwards in the post-stage press conference, Wiebes explained her ‘dual personalities’, so to speak.
“Especially as a child, I was quite shy, and so I’m not really a sprinter type off the bike,” she said.
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“Maybe with some other things – like if I want something, I directly do impulsive things. But I think really in a final I switch something off, and focus so much on this sprint. It’s like the killer instinct is coming up.”
The victory sees Wiebes go 14 seconds clear in the yellow jersey, and another win as the Tour heads across the border into France on stage 3 isn’t out of the question.
“It’s a long and hard day, so we will see how the legs are and how we feel about it,” her teammate Elena Cecchini told Cyclingnews, not ruling out another stage win on Monday.
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Wiebes celebrates with her SD Worx-Protime teammates after a big team effort on the road to Geneva (Image credit: Getty Images)
The challenge will likely be greater than it was during the Tour’s opening weekend (even if her uphill win on stage 1 was a mightily impressive feat), especially given that rival teams seem increasingly reluctant to contribute to chasing down breakaways only for Wiebes to beat them.
“It’s a day where it would be really hard to control. So I think we are happy with what we have, and we see how it develops tomorrow,” Cecchini said.
“We will try as much as possible to survive the climb. It’s not going to be easy, but maybe.”
SD Worx-Protime found themselves in that scenario on stage 2, where Lidl-Trek launched several attacks off the front in an attempt to wear them and Wiebes down.
In the end, Riejanne Markus’ 39km attack was only brought back once SD Worx committed everyone – even GC contender Anna van der Breggen – to work on the front, while Liv-Jayco-AlUla also set up a late lead-out train.
“I decided myself that she was helping to chase. For me, it was also better not to see her chasing, but I’m happy that she did and it also shows what kind of teammate Anna is,” Wiebes said of Van der Breggen, while Stam told WielerFlits that the team had to “pull out all the stops” to score victory number two.
“I was in two minds up until 800 metres from the finish line. If Riejanne breaks away and stays 30 seconds ahead, you have to pull out all the stops,” he said.
“At one, we realised it was almost impossible, so we said everyone has to get involved, and Lorena will just have to fend for herself.”
With a perfect start to the Tour, SD Worx can now call their race a success, concluded Cecchini, though Van der Breggen and Lotte Kopecky will have ambitions in the hills and mountains to come.
“Let’s say that until now everything went smoothly, and yes, we are lucky to have Lorena,” the Italian said.
“It’s going to be a super hard Tour. We knew that these two stages were more realistic for us. Of course, now we have a little bit the goal to see how far Anna can go in the GC, but without any stress.
“I think that, for a team to wear the yellow jersey for two stages already out of nine is a good result.”
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