These are the storylines to follow as the women’s peloton navigates Classics season.
Kopecky, Vos, and Longo Borghini climb the Muur-Kapelmuur in 2024.
Cor Vos
For a moment, let’s think about the Spring Classics like your favourite book series. Each book may feature different main characters, although your old favourites always pop in and out, and while each book has its own central storyline, there are always underlying themes that run through the pages of the series as a whole.
Every Classic is its own beast, with unique challenges the riders will need to overcome to get to the finish line first. But once we get to the end of the Classics season and look back at the races, there are always larger storylines that encompass the months of one-day racing.
Going into a new series, you want to be prepared. You want to know the characters, even if you don’t want to know the outcome of the books themselves. For the best preparation, here are some storylines you might want to follow this Spring.
Is SD Worx-Protime still a Classics powerhouse, or will they pass the torch?
For years, SD Worx-Protime has been the best team in the peloton. No matter the race, no matter the terrain, the Dutch team always finds a way to shine. Even when their team tactics seemed disjointed, they still managed to win by having the strongest riders. That trend finally began to shift last year, as evidenced by the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, where they went in without a general classification winner. Of course, they still won two stages with Lorena Wiebes, but normally, they aren’t a one-trick pony.
The possibility that Lotte Kopecky is in top form again bodes well for their upcoming season, but the other factor they can’t control is the strength of their competitors. FDJ United-Suez and UAE Team ADQ spent the last two years frantically signing talent with the goal of dethroning SD Worx-Protime. Now is when we will see if all those big-money moves paid off.
Kopecky winning on the track recently at the European Championships
Still, Kopecky will play a large role not only in her team’s success but also in the Classics season as a whole. She is her own subplot. Will we see a return of the 2023/2024 Kopecky, who was so unstoppable? Will this new version of Kopecky take a step back to the comfort of her sprinting-type years, or does she still want to win every race, no matter the elevation gain?
Anna van der Breggen remains a wild card in that it’s unclear where her form lies, and what she’ll be able to do in an ever-changing peloton. Mischa Bredewold is also a wildcard, for the opposite reason. The former-European champion continues to grow as a rider. Her wins at the Amstel Gold Race, the Itzulia, and the Classic Lorient Agglomération (three times in a row) point to her talent and her versatility, making it clear that she is only getting better as she gains experience.
How many different teams can win one-day races this Spring?
There was a time, not all that long ago, that SD Worx-Protime won almost every Spring one-day event. They did so with a handful of different riders, but it was almost always the same team on the top step, with a few exceptions. Even as recently as 2022, the list of spring winners was limited to only SD Worx-Protime and Lidl-Trek until Marta Cavalli finally broke the streak at the Amstel Gold Race and La Flèche Wallonne and then Annemiek van Vleuten continued to shake things up at Liège-Bastogne-Liège.
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