The 2022 season might hardly be known as something apart from a profitable one for SD Worx, who did in any case as soon as once more declare the highest group spot on the Ladies’s WorldTour rankings. Nonetheless, in 2023 the Dutch squad have hit an entire new stage; already by mid-Might they’ve equalled their win tally of final yr.
Consequently, the squad should not solely dominating the groups class of the rankings, which they’ve executed yearly however one because the Ladies’s WorldTour began in 2016, but in addition the person rankings.
Following a 1-2 GC end from Demi Vollering and Marlen Reusser at Itzulia Ladies, the high 3 spots on the Ladies’s WorldTour belong to Vollering, Lotte Kopecky and Reusser, with teammate Lorena Wiebes additionally in sixth place.
“Everybody will get a chunk of the pie with us. That our riders undergo hearth for one another like this is without doubt one of the keys to success,” stated sports activities supervisor Danny Stam in a press release. “However on such a profitable first months of the 2023 season, we had not dared to dream beforehand both.”
The group received each one of many three phases of Itzulia Ladies between Vollering and Reusser, taking the win whole for the squad to twenty this yr already – greater than double that of every other group – with 15 of these being Ladies’s WorldTour victories.
“I merely don’t have any phrases for that,” stated Stam. “We ask ourselves how that is doable and the way lengthy we will proceed like this. Everyone seems to be at stage. Though you possibly can’t all the time management that your self. With us too, some riders at the moment are struggling a bit from damage, however our winners are spared from it for now.”
Annemiek van Vleuten (Movistar) has been the rider who has so usually taken the highlight away from SD Worx in recent times, successful the Ladies’s WorldTour chief’s jersey competitors in 2022, 2021 and 2018, however she hasn’t had the identical stage of top-step success this season and is now sitting in fourth place.
The Movistar rider, or maybe one of many highly effective Trek-Segafredo trio – Elisa Longo Borghini, 2020 collection winner Lizzie Deignan and new arrival Gaia Realini – might have the chance to problem this dominance because the season progresses.
Nonetheless, SD Worx have given themselves a strong head begin and the rapid outlook is prone to deliver even an extra strengthening of the SD Worx rankings domination. At Vuelta a Burgos Feminas, the subsequent Ladies’s WorldTour race on the agenda, Vollering and Reusser are each lining up, whereas Wiebes can also be becoming a member of the fray once more.
“In Burgos we wish to become involved within the sprints along with her,” stated Stam. “There are additionally two arrivals uphill, together with one explosive climb and one lengthy climb. Our purpose is to seize one other stage and to see how far we get within the common classification.”
Van Vleuten, Longo Borghini, Realini, Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM) and Pfeiffer Georgi (Group DSM) are all sitting the race out so the one non SD Worx rider from the top-10 of the rankings is Silvia Persico (UAE Group ADQ). The Italian sits in tenth place on 912.14 factors in contrast with Vollering’s 2893.86, so even with an ideal run couldn’t come near difficult SD Worx for that high spot.
Actually, with such a strong starting to the season for Vollering – who’s even 1,500 factors forward of even her teammates in second and third place – it appears to be like more and more probably that SD Worx will break their five-year purple jersey drought on the finish of 2023.
The final rider from the group to high the person leaderboard on the finish of the Ladies’s WorldTour season was Anna van der Breggen in 2017.
