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The 2022 season could hardly be called anything other than a successful one for SD Worx, who did after all once again claim the top team spot on the Women’s WorldTour rankings. However, in 2023 the Dutch squad have hit a whole new level; already by mid-May they have equalled their win tally of last year.
As a result, the squad are not only dominating the teams category of the rankings, which they have done every year but one since the Women’s WorldTour started in 2016, but also the individual rankings.
Following a 1-2 GC finish from Demi Vollering and Marlen Reusser at Itzulia Women, the top 3 spots on the Women’s WorldTour belong to Vollering, Lotte Kopecky and Reusser, with teammate Lorena Wiebes also in sixth place.
“Everyone gets a piece of the pie with us. That our riders go through fire for each other like this is one of the keys to success,” said sports manager Danny Stam in a statement. “But on such a successful first months of the 2023 season, we had not dared to dream beforehand either.”
The team won every one of the three stages of Itzulia Women between Vollering and Reusser, taking the win total for the squad to 20 this year already – more than double that of any other team – with 15 of those being Women’s WorldTour victories.
“I simply have no words for that,” said Stam. “We ask ourselves how this is possible and how long we can continue like this. Everyone is at level. Although you can’t always control that yourself. With us too, some riders are now suffering a bit from injury, but our winners are spared from it for now.”
Annemiek van Vleuten (Movistar) has been the rider who has so often taken the spotlight away from SD Worx in recent years, winning the Women’s WorldTour leader’s jersey competition in 2022, 2021 and 2018, but she hasn’t had the same level of top-step success this season and is now sitting in fourth place.
The Movistar rider, or perhaps one of the powerful Trek-Segafredo trio – Elisa Longo Borghini, 2020 series winner Lizzie Deignan and new arrival Gaia Realini – could have the opportunity to challenge this dominance as the season progresses.
Still, SD Worx have given themselves a powerful head start and the immediate outlook is likely to bring even a further strengthening of the SD Worx rankings domination. At Vuelta a Burgos Feminas, the next Women’s WorldTour race on the agenda, Vollering and Reusser are both lining up, while Wiebes is also joining the fray again.
“In Burgos we want to get…
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