37 degrees in the late afternoon in Geneva, where Andalusian poets soothe their souls reading slow love sonnets by Ronsard in the Bastions kiosk when a lightning bolt breaks the stillness on the Mont Blanc dock, competing horizontally, intense yellow, with the force and power of the jet that attracts so many photos from overheated tourists. It is Lorena Wiebes launched towards her second victory in the second stage of the Tour, whose sprints, whether uphill or flat, she dominates, as she has dominated mass finishes in all races for years. She is an adult playing with girls – there is still such a difference in level in the women’s peloton between those who have been training as professionals for years and those who are now approaching high performance – who takes a tenth or so, surrounded, the last curve before the final straight and then, with 200 meters to go, an atomic zigzag, a rushhhhh that makes the hair stand on end of those she passes brushing past, paralyzed, the calm of the barriers to her right and an imperial corridor, a red carpet on which she accelerates unstoppable to the finish line by the bridge. The peloton is another world, distant. The second, the notable Italian sprinter Elisa Balsamo, who has been world champion, arrives three, four bike lengths away, so wide was the gap on the asphalt, wheel to wheel with the third, the legendary Marianne Vos, who gives up. “There are no limits for Lorena,” admits the triple world champion, 39 years old. “If on Saturday it was winning the sprint after a climb that only the best of the Tour overcame and an attack by Demi Vollering, what wouldn’t she be capable of doing on Sunday…”
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She is Dutch, 27 years old, has 133 wins in her career and the one in Geneva is the seventh she has achieved in the Tour, the most won in the modern era, four more than the second, the three victories of Vollering. If those numbers are breathtaking, even more extraordinary is her overall record in the women’s WorldTour circuit, as this victory is the 54th she has achieved in the last 55 sprints she has contested. Since her defeat to Charlotte Kool in the Rotterdam stage of the 2024 Tour, Wiebes (1.71m, 60 kilos) has only suffered two defeats, one on the road (she was ninth in the last Tour of Bruges) and another due to regulations: after winning the first stage and the pink jersey of the last Giro in Ravenna, she was disqualified when the commissaires found that her bike weighed less than the 6,800 grams set as minimum. Few sprinters, if any, have dominated mass finishes in major races so thoroughly. “No, I don’t get bored of winning,” Wiebes says on the shores of Lake Geneva. “I think every sprint is an exciting story because if you make a small mistake, the sprint is over and you can’t finish it for the team. It’s always exciting and sometimes it makes me a little nervous…”
The nerves were felt more by her teammates who found it more difficult than expected to end the solitary utopian breakaway of the lanky Dutchwoman Riejanne Markus, who was only caught 600 m from the finish. “She seemed unreachable, and at one point we decided to also put Lotte [Kopecky, her lead-out] in the chase because we needed everyone. And then I knew it depended on me to find my own way. I was able to go out about 200 meters from the finish. And then I launched my sprint.”
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The great Belgian finisher worked for her leader as the very experienced Olympic champion in Rio Anna van der Breggen had done before, in whom SD Worx has placed its hopes of winning the final general classification. It was as if before the first category one climb (waiting for them on Monday at kilometer 24, in the Jura crossing towards Poligny, of a 156.9-kilometer stage) the Tour favorites wanted to warm up hard, as the hardworking Pauline Ferrand Prévot was also seen, who launched the sprint of her teammate at Visma, Marianne Vos, and at least Paula Blasi, in white, putting her chest to the warm air of Geneva to protect Elisa Longo, the Piedmont queen of her team, capricious and bossy.
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