Franziska Koch takes yellow jersey from Zoe Bäckstedt with breakaway performance at Simac Ladies Tour

In 2019, Franziska Koch won stage 4 of the Boels Ladies Tour (now Simac Ladies Tour) as a 19-year-old neo-pro. Five years on, the DSM-Firmenich PostNL rider found herself to be the best-placed rider of a 14-rider breakaway on stage 4 of the 2024 edition and worked hard to hold off the peloton and take the overall race lead, donning her career-first GC leader’s jersey.

“The group was pretty big, and my DS told me that I was the best-placed rider in GC in the group. Then I was eager to ride hard. I tried to keep the distance to the peloton as big as possible and went full gas,” Koch said after the stage.