For Natalie Grinczer, the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift will be the first race for a new team Lifeplus-Wahoo after a mid-season transfer from Stade Rochelais Charente-Maritime. She had joined the French team for the 2022 season and raced the first edition of the women’s Tour with them but had to abandon on stage 3 due to crash injuries.
In an exclusive interview with Cyclingnews, Grinczer tells the story of why and how she got a spot on her new team, what her goals are for the Tour – and how she balances cycling with her actual job of being a physio.
When Stade Rochelais Charente-Maritime were overlooked for a wildcard invitation for the 2023 Tour de France Femmes, Grinczer had prepared herself mentally for it and was happy to stay with the team. But she hadn’t counted on the team curtailing its season for financial reasons and went looking for an opportunity to keep racing.
“I was obviously disappointed when I saw that we weren’t in the Tour, but it wasn’t my plan to transfer mid-season. I was quite settled there. But the day after Nationals, we heard that the team was in financial difficulty and that we wouldn’t have any races for the rest of the year. I had been in contact with Tom Varney [Lifeplus-Wahoo general manager] previously and mentioned the situation, and we just got talking from there. They had a space for me and were willing to take me at short notice, it was sort of a whirlwind. Within two weeks, I went from ‘you won’t race anymore this season’ to ‘would you want to go to the Tour’ – and I’m not going to say no to that. I just feel really lucky,” Grinczer explains.
Her second Tour de France Femmes will be an opportunity to make better memories after she crashed on stage 2 of the 2022 edition. She abandoned the race during stage 3 due to her injuries, having fractured her arm and her pelvis in the crash.
“It was really hard to take because we had really prepared properly for the Tour, looked at the courses, did loads of training camps, and then for that to just happen … I was in total denial to start with. I started the third day and rode like 100 km before the guy in the broom wagon told me to get in. I just kept riding away from them. But I had so much pain, I knew I couldn’t do anything. I guess when I was riding away from the broom wagon that day, I was just processing it in my mind.”
A year later, Grinczer is on the start line in France again with some unfinished business. She isn’t targeting a…
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