For many years, the Ronde van Drenthe was a race for the sprinters and Team DSM-Firmenich PostNL won the race in 2021 and 2022 with Lorena Wiebes.
Following Wiebes’ transfer to SD Worx-Protime, the team has been left chasing success in the Dutch classic, struggling to find the rider and tactics to win again.
The blue-white-orange-clad squad backed their sprinter Charlotte Kool on Sunday but she came up short on the new finish up the VAMberg, finishing 11th behind her lead-out Pfeiffer Georgi. Wiebes won for a fourth consecutive time.
“We were really sharp and in position all day with the narrow roads and potential echelons and were where we needed to be with the attacks on the last lap. The whole team did a really strong job in the lead-out. Unfortunately, it just didn’t work out, but we can take real confidence with how we rode the race,” Georgi said after the race.
Kool and Georgi were very attentive on the penultimate of six ascents of the VAMberg, following an attack by Puck Pieterse (Fenix-Deceuninck).
For a while, things looked very good for them as Wiebes was the only other rider able to hold Pieterse’s wheel, and even when four more riders bridged across, it was still a good situation with two teammates in a group of eight.
After the move had been caught by the chasing peloton, the team did what they do best, putting together a great lead-out on the final kilometres as Abi Smith, Franzi Koch and Pfeiffer Georgi lined up ahead of Kool. However, they hit the front too early, and Georgi ended up in the wind at the very front of the peloton from 1.5 kilometres to go.
Georgi gave it all she had until 325 metres from the line, but Kool didn’t have the legs to follow Wiebes, Elisa Balsamo (Lidl-Trek), Pieterse and others on the uphill finish, dropping back further and further. In the end, a final acceleration by Georgi even beat Kool to 10th place.
In hindsight, it may have been a better idea to have Kool save her legs in the peloton and let Georgi cover the attacks on her own but on the other hand, Georgi would have a hard time beating Wiebes in a sprint of a small group.
And Pieterse’s attack with one lap to go could well have become the decisive move with two DSM-Firmenich PostNL riders in a group of four or eight. In the end, the effort to get into that group and keep it going cost Kool in the final sprint.
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