Last year, the women’s WorldTour squad, Team DSM, won 28 races. Twenty-two of those victories were by Lorena Wiebes, who now rides for Team SD Worx after signing for the Dutch outfit at the end of the 2022 season. For some teams, the loss of a prolific winner like Wiebes might spell panic. It might instil a sort of urgency to sign another rider with an established career to replace Wiebes and ensure that the team performs at the same level next year. But, as Pfeiffer Georgi tells me, Team DSM don’t work like that, and they’ve thought ahead.
“I think this team is really good at bringing young riders in and developing their own leaders. That’s something I’ve experienced firsthand coming in as a junior and now this year, going into my fifth season, I have the opportunity to be a leader,” Georgi says. “Lorena has now left the team, but we’ve got Charlotte [Kool] who’s still one of the fastest sprinters in the world and I think we’ve got a really strong lead-out to support her.”
If you take the time to think about it, Team DSM’s development of Kool could be a stroke of genius. The 23-year-old has led out the fastest sprinter in the women’s peloton for the past year, watching, learning and understanding her every move. Not only will this have helped Kool improve physically, it should also have given her a broad understanding of the art of sprinting, and what it takes to become the best of the best. Now Wiebes has moved to a different team, Kool will be sprinting against her and will know her new rival’s mentality better than anyone.
“I think we were in a really special position last year when Lorena was on the team, as we had Charlotte as the last lead-out rider when she’s already one of the fastest sprinters out there,” Georgi says. “That was quite a unique position to be in and it’s really nice that she’s now got her own opportunity.”
With Kool now the team’s designated sprinter for most of the races in the 2023 season, Georgi says that the famed Team DSM lead-out train will need to change to develop a new rider to do the job Kool did for Wiebes last year. “I think it’s hard to replace the quality of Charlotte because it is very difficult to find such a fast sprinter to be a lead-out rider and not a sprinter themselves. But I definitely have confidence we will still win races already from the start of the year.”
Georgi at the 2022 British National Time Trial Championships (Image: Zac Williams/SWpix)
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