Dutch sprint superstar, Lorena Wiebes heads into the Tour de France avec Zwift next week on the back of a dominant performance at the Tour de Pologne over the weekend.
The SD Worx-Protime rider won all the stages of the three day race and took the overall general classification by 20 seconds ahead of Elisa Balsamo (Lidl-Trek), with Lara Gillespie (UAE Team ADQ) in third place.
Sunday's final stage into Lublin was touch and go, a two woman breakaway surviving deep into the final, SD Worx only bringing them back with 4.5km of the 101.3km stage to go. However, despite a challenge from UAE Team ADQ and Human Powered Health, the team held position on the wide roads until the final kilometre, Lotte Kopecky delivering Wiebes perfectly with 175m to go.
In Zamość on Friday's opening stage the weather proved the main obstacle, rain making for wet roads and a crash and splitting the SD Worx lead out in the closing kilometres, though Wiebes led home team mate Barbara Guarischi.
A solo breakaway rider was caught inside the final kilometre on Saturday too, Katherine Sarsikov (Team USA) caught with just over 8km to go. Other teams then tried unsuccessfully to disrupt the SD Worx lead out in the final, but the day concluded with another relatively straightforward win.
This was the 13th edition of the Tour de Pologne Women, which was a feature of the women's calendar between 2000 and 2008. There was a single edition in 2016, the race only returning in 2024, though this year it attracted its strongest start list to date, with eight WorldTour teams taking part, some using it as a Tour de France Femmes warm up.
The race was a who's who of women's sprinting royalty, Wiebes joined by Balsamo, Gillespie, Chiara Consonni (Canyon-SRAM) and Maggie Coles-Lyster (Human Powered Health) among others. Indeed, only Charlotte Kool (Fenix-Premier Tech) was missing.
Wiebes's performance extended her remarkable run of sprinting form, she has only been beaten in a bunch kick for the win once since the start of 2024. That loss was at this year's Ronde van Brugge, when Welsh woman, Carys Lloyd (Movistar) took the win, after Wiebes lost her leadout in the final kilometres.
The series of results and her proven form bode well for the upcoming Tour de France Femmes, which opens on Saturday, August 1st with a 137.8km stage starting and finishing in Lausanne.
Wiebes won the opening stage of the 2022 race, the first edition of the race's current format, wearing the yellow jersey for one day, but a repeat performance may not be so easy. The opening stage climbs more than 1,600m, concluding with a fourth category climb and if she is to wear yellow in Lausanne, she will need to survive into the closing 250m, where the road levels out.
