With victory at Paris-Roubaix Femmes, Dutch superteam SD Worx-Protime recorded their 14th win of the 2024 season and already look on the way to matching or even exceeding the astounding 61-win tally they recorded last season.
They stand ahead of Lidl-Trek and EF Education-Cannondale, six wins clear, when this time last spring, they would still have to wait another month to record victory number 14.
It was Lotte Kopecky, reigning world champion and presumptive best rider in the world, who delivered the glory in the Vélodrome André-Petrieux at the end of the 149km race. However, it was the team as a whole – from seventh-placed Lorena Wiebes to veteran Christine Majerus and directeurs sportifs including Danny Stam and Lars Boom in the team cars – who worked alongside her to take home the famous cobblestone trophy.
"I think it's a race we really liked to win. We won Flanders and all the big races but never here. It was high on our wish list," Stam told Cyclingnews after the full team, backroom staff, and all took the podium to celebrate the win on the velodrome infield.
Having previously won two Tour of Flanders titles in a row via Kopecky, SD Worx came into Roubaix hoping to claim their first-ever win at the race after a disappointing result in Belgium last week – a lowly, for them at least, fifth place.
Wiebes, who was part of the chase group behind Kopecky's leaders on the run to Roubaix and an ever-present sprint threat should the groups come together on the final run-in, called the victory a "revenge" of sorts for Flanders.
"It means quite a lot because we worked really hard for this and also a bit of revenge for Flanders. We showed that we are still a really good team," she told Cyclingnews after the race.
Her positioning in the group just down the road behind Kopecky and a host of other big names – Marianne Vos, Pfeiffer Georgi, and Elisa Balsamo included – meant that SD Worx were in an ideal position after that lead group had formed, in part due to Kopecky's own moves, on the Camphin-en-Pévèle 20km out.
"We planned to let Lotte attack on the pave before Mons-en-Pévèle," Stam said of the team's tactics during the day. "She tried there but she didn't have the riders we were hoping for.
"We also said to Lorena that you need to stay in the race because she's a very strong weapon. If things came back together then the others have a problem.
"So, in the final we could actually put Lotte in the wheel and put the pressure with Lorena on the front. She could save the legs a little bit, and then the sprint was impressive."
Kopecky had been making the pace and attacking sporadically at some of the hardest cobbled sectors of the race ever since the four-star Tilloy à Sars-et-Rosières, just over 70km from the line.
The decisive split wasn't made until much later though, at the second-last four- or five-star of the day, when Kopecky and co. rode away. Previously, the tailwind that blew across much of the race route meant that groups kept on getting back into it, Stam explained.
"I think it was really a lot of tailwind, and I think that made it really different with a lot of girls coming back," he said. "But I think that in the final, you could see that it was a really hard race, and everybody was really dead actually."
However, in the end, tailwind or not, Kopecky, Stam, and the rest of the all-conquering SD Worx squad could celebrate another massive win to add to their seemingly never-ending collection.
It was the first Paris-Roubaix triumph in four outings for the Dutch squad, and of course, it might not be the last. Look out for Wiebes at future editions, Stam said.
"I think everybody can see that Lorena is making big steps, and also, last week in Flanders, she was really strong. I think it's just a little bit of time before she's racing for the win in races like this," he concluded before Wiebes herself handed down a final judgement on her own accomplishment – a career-best result 38 places up on her previous best.
"Maybe I was missing a little bit to be really in the 'front' front," she said. "But It was still a good situation to be in the group behind a Lotte to put some pressure from behind so that she didn't have to work too much.
"This time without bad luck, so that's why I could go for a result, and yeah, we could play the cards, really good today so I'm happy."
