The Spring Classics kick into high gear this week with Dwars door Vlaanderen on Wednesday and Tour of Flanders on Sunday. Over the next four weeks the women’s peloton will be battling it out at five major events in the Women’s WorldTour (WWT): Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix Femmes, Amstel Gold Race Ladies, La Flèche Wallonne Féminine, and Liège-Bastogne-Liège Femmes.
At the moment, SD Worx-Protime occupies first spot (3802 pt.) in the Women’s WorldTour rankings, followed by Lidl-Trek (3263 pt.), but there are many other teams that will be looking to make their mark in the Spring Classics and move up in the rankings. Here’s a look at where things stand with the top three teams in the Women’s WorldTour, along with a few predictions about how they might perform in the over the next four weeks.
#1 SD Worx-Protime (3802 pt.) is ranked #1 for good reason. Their major wins so far this season are the UAE Tour, Strade Bianchi, Miron Ronde van Drenthe, and Gent-Wevelgem. When they aren’t winning, they’re finishing on the podium, as they did at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and Trofeo Alfredo Binda.
While Demi Vollering and Lotte Kopecky will be the team’s chosen leaders for the Spring Classics, the team’s supporting riders could easily take on leadership roles if the need arises. Support riders already start-listed for the Spring Classics will primarily be Mischa Bredewold, Femke Gerritse, Marlen Reusser, Niamh Fisher-Black, and Chantal van den Broek-Blaak. Rotating into this mix as needed will be Femke Markus and Anna Shackley.
It’s a superstar cast from top to bottom and in theory SD Worx-Protime has very few weaknesses. If 2023 is anything to go by, when the team won the Tour of Flanders, Amstel Gold Race Ladies, La Flèche Wallonne Féminine, and Liège-Bastogne-Liège Femmes, then they are the team to beat. The only Spring Classic that eluded them was Paris-Roubaix Femmes.
However, 2024 is not 2023, and Lidl-Trek and other teams have successfully challenged the dominance of SD Worx-Protime this season. While it’s quite possible they could repeat their incredible 2023 performance in the Spring Classics, to do so will require much greater effort, tactics, and of course, luck.
#2 Lidl-Trek (3263 pt.) has improved vastly this season. With more money from co-sponsor Lidl, the super-market chain, the team has been able to invest more in the well-being of its riders and has seen much better results.
Early on in the season, it was Amanda Spratt’s performance at the Santos Tour Down Under (4th GC), along with Gaia Realini’s performance at the UAE Tour (4th GC), that were the first hints that Lidl-Trek had stepped up to a new level. Any doubts that these results were merely “early season” victories were quickly put to rest with Elisa Longo Borghini’s fine performance at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad (3rd) and Strade Bianche (2nd).
Since then, Elisa Balsamo has carried the torch for Lidl-Trek with victories at Trofeo Alfredo Binda and Classic Brugge-De Panne, as well as podium finishes at Miron Ronde van Drenthe (2nd) and Gent-Wevelgem (2nd). Similarly, 22-year-old Shirin van Anrooij is showing that she, too, is quite capable of producing results, finishing 4th at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and 5th at Strade Bianche.
In the upcoming Spring Classics, Longo Borghini, Balsamo, and Van Anrooij will have leadership roles, with support coming primarily from older riders Lizzie Deigan, Ellen van Dijk, and Lucinda Brand. Much of team’s strength this year is a result of the new support staff working behind the scenes. Lidl-Trek’s eleven person DS staff reads like a who’s who of cycling with names like Yaroslav Popovych, Maxime Monfort, Ina-Yoko Teutenberg, Grégory Rast, and Kim Andersen. And that doesn’t even include the seventeen people who are part the Performance staff. In the end, how the team will perform in the Spring Classics against SD Worx-Protime may have more to do with these people behind the scenes, than the riders we see on the television.
#3 Canyon//SRAM Racing (2108 pt.) is ranked 3rd primarily because of Neve Bradbury’s strong performance in the early season at the Santos Tour Down Under and UAE Tour. Kasia Niewiadoma has also performed well for the team, finishing second to Marlen Reusser (SD Worx-Protime) at the Setmana Ciclista Volta and fourth at Strade Bianche. Other riders like Elise Chabbey, Soraya Paladin, and Chloe Dygert have scored some good top 10 results at the early season one-day races Trofeo Alfredo Binda, Strade Bianchi, and Classic Brugge-De Panne. More capable in multi-day tours, rather than in one-day races, their performance in the upcoming Spring Classics will depend upon how well they can adapt to the technical aspects of each course. Their best results in the past have come at the Tour of Flanders and Amstel Gold Race with Kasia Niewiadoma, who is really a climber and GC rider better suited to the Grand Tours. Their one-day specialist, Maike van der Duin, has performed well in the past in the races leading up to the Spring Classics, however, her 2024 season has been hampered by a broken ankle sustained at a team training camp this past winter. Other riders on the team who could perform well under the right circumstances are Elise Chabbey, Soraya Paladin, Ricarda Bauernfeld, as well as Chloe Dygert, who started her season late but is looking strong and could surprise us.
UCI Women’s WorldTour Team Ranking (25/03/2024)
(source: procyclingstats.com)
- Team SD Worx-Protime (3802)
- Lidl-Trek (3263)
- Canyon//SRAM Racing (2108)
- UAE Team ADQ (2021)
- Roland (1633)
- Liv AlUla Jayco (1623)
- Team dsm-firmenich PostNL (1617)
- FDJ – SUEZ (1479)
- Movistar Team (1476)
- Fenix-Deceuninck (1418)
- Team Visma | Lease a Bike (1411)
- AG Insurance – Soudal Team (1220)
- EF Education-Cannondale – CTW (1141)
- Human Powered Health (931)
- Uno-X Mobility (867)
- Cofidis Women Team – CTW (797)
- CERATIZIT-WNT Pro Cycling Team (713)
