STICKING TO THE PLAN

Lorena Wiebes's historic win in Paris was the result of months of planning and team building. Owen Rogers was there to find out how they made it work

Her focus is far from the crowds and their incessant banging on the hoardings. It’s far from the iconic landmark in front of her or the cobbles underneath her wheels. Lorena Wiebes only has eyes for the fast approaching finish line.

When Wiebes crossed the line in Paris to win the opening stage of the Tour de France Femmes she rode into a new place, straight into cycling immortality.

It might not have been the first ever stage of the women’s Tour de France, or the first yellow jersey worn by a female rider, but the rebirth of the race at this point in time makes it the most significant. The new-look women’s Tour de France is more than a new dawn.

Thrust into the arms of her family, then as a bet, a friend’s baby thrust into her arms for the podium, the DSM rider was now a star.

The French father and son standing nearby wearing DSM caps, taking snaps of the yellow jersey with an iPhone were clearly as impressed by the 23-year-old as they had been by Romain Bardet in the men’s event.

While her victory was never inevitable, a bunch sprint win never is, it was the culmination of months, even years of planning, that brought DSM to Paris with the peloton’s best sprint team.

“It started two years ago when we knew Lorena was coming to the team. We needed to think about a lead-out, and a really, really good one,” says team coach Albert Timmer, himself a former lead-out man for Marcel Kittel and John Degenkolb. “We look for qualities in riders, their timing, being in a corner at a certain time.