In the first season of the Tour de France Femmes, it is already one of the most anticipated races on the calendar, and yet there is no blueprint of how to prepare for such a big goal. With only two Grand Tours in the WorldTour, and few preparatory stage races to use as build up, there’s not yet a natural path towards the demanding month of July. As a result, riders and teams have had to carefully devise their own preparation plans and the list of variables has grown long.
Every team and every rider have taken different approaches, but for SD Worx – who want to win not only stages but the overall too – it has been even more important to try and get their plans just right. Demi Vollering and Lotte Kopecky have had markedly different run-ins to the Tour de France Femmes, and they explained why.
Giro or no Giro?
Though the Giro offered a good opportunity to race and tackle some big climbing days ahead of the Tour de France Femmes, its proximity to its French equivalent meant riders had to think carefully about whether to race it or not. There have been just 13 days between the end of the Giro and the start of the Tour – fewer if you consider the travel and media commitments round each race – making recovery between the races a potential challenge. With few other months on the calendar featuring such a quantity of race days, riders had little to go on in making their decisions about the two races.
Despite the unknowns and question marks, many riders decided to do both, including Giro winner Annemiek van Vleuten (Movistar) and GC hopefuls Juliette Labous (Team DSM) and Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig (FDJ-SUEZ-Futuroscope). But for Demi Vollering, who finished 3rd overall in Italy last year, the safe option seemed to be to skip the Giro.
“I did the Giro only two times in my life, and both times I was not so good coming out of the Giro,” Vollering said. “So that was the main reason why I made the decision to not do the Giro because I’m afraid to come out of it again not super good – that’s something I don’t want to risk.”
What works for Vollering, though, is not what works for everyone, and not even what works for the SD Worx outfit in general. It seems that the type of rider and the type of stages they are targeting has had an effect on whether or not riders choose to ride the Giro when they’re also aiming at the Tour. Marianne Vos (Jumbo-Visma) took a mixed approach, racing the first half of the Giro but going home early in order to focus on the…
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