#Liv AlUla Jayco

[tadejpogacar]

Amstel Gold Race Ladies Edition 2024 🥇 Marianne Vos (Team Visma | Lease a Bike) 🥈 Lorena Wiebes (Team SD Worx - Protime) 🥉 Ingvild Gåskjenn (Liv AlUla Jayco)

📸 by Rafa Gomez/Sprint Cycling

[womensworldtour]

The disruption and significant shortening of Sunday's Amstel Gold Race likely benefited Ingvild Gåskjenn, whose podium place was a nice break-out for the young Norwegian. In an interview after the race she said her team (Liv AlULa Jayco) had intended to go for Alex Manley in the sprint, but Manly was out of position and Gåskjenn found herself in a good position and went for it, beating out the likes of Pfeiffer Giorgi, Elisa Longo Borghini, and the rest of a very strong bunch.

[dimensionsvelo]

Les vélos du Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift 2024

Le Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift 2024 est aussi une belle occasion pour débusquer quelques nouveautés… Et découvrir les spécificités des machines des championnes bien sûr ! Les paddocks du Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift 2024 et les vélos qu’on y trouve sont à la fois proches de ceux du Tour masculin et différents. On y retrouve ainsi les mêmes marques, les mêmes équipementiers, mais souvent…

[trixies-allstar-crown]

Liv Racing-TeqFind to be merged with Jayco-AlUla, development team created

'For us, this is a huge step forward and a valuable one for female riders' says Australian team's general manager from CyclingNews RSS Feed https://ift.tt/Kr9pduW

[womensworldtour]

The agony and the ecstacy: Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx-Protime) celebrates too early at the finish of Amstel Gold Ladies, allowing Marianne Vos (Visma Lease-a-Bike) to pip her at the line with a bike throw.

This was a weird race, particularly when it was neutralized for about an hour due to a police motorcycle accident with injuries. Eventually the race was shortened by 54km and only three final laps, which made for intense racing!

Shout-out to Ingvild Gåsjenn (Liv AlUla Jayco) for a nice sprint finish alongside Vos to snag third place on the podium!

[womensworldtour]

Giro d'Italia Women 2024 - Stage 3

The third stage of this year's Giro d'Italia Women saw the first real test for the climbers, with a mountain top finish that saw Mavi García (Liv AlUl Jayco) set a fast pace in the closing kilometers.

Niamh Fisher-Black (SD Worx-Protime) then bridged to García and launched on the final climb to win by several seconds. She'll wear the polka-dot jersey tomorrow, and could keep it to the end.

Behind Fisher-Black was a group of three GC contenders, including her teammate Lotte Kopecky, Juliette Labous (dsm-firmenich PostNL), and current GC leader Elisa Longo Borghini (Lidl-Trek). With that performance, ELB maintains her pink jersey, and Kopecky and Labous move into second and third, respectively. We have to say, Kopecky is climbing really well right now to stay with Labous and ELB, and a 1-2 finish is a nice result for SD Worx-Protime. Kopocky will wear the points jersey tomorrow.

Antonia Niedermaier (Canyon//SRAM Racing) wasn't far back from the top group and moves into fourth, solidifying her position in the young rider classification. Her closest rival in the white jersey is her teammate, Neve Bradbury.

Tomorrow's course has three climbs near the end, and may be tempting for a breakaway.

[womensworldtour]

This was the winning move as Elisa Longo Borghini (Lidl-Trek) on the lead-up to the last Holstheide climb that cracked Demi Vollering (SD Worx-Protime) in yesterday's De Brabantse Pijl (La Flèche Brabançonne).

Vollering and ELB both were extremely strong, and powered away from the peloton to catch the remnants of the break-away, along with Sofia Bertizzolo (UAE Team ADQ) and Alessia Vigilia (FDJ-Suez). When ELB and Vollering launched on the s-Bocht Overijse climb it splintered the group, and only Vigilia was strong enough to go with them. It cost her dearly, however, and she would finally drop on the last ascent of the Moskesstraat.

It almost looked like we could expect a two-up sprint between Vollering and ELB, like a rematch of last year's Liège-Bastogne-Liège, but ELB had other ideas. Launching at the base of the Holstheide climb, ELB was too strong and Vollering had no response; the race was over. ELB powered ahead (maybe getting a bit of a moto draft!) and won by over 40 seconds.

Alexandra Manly (Liv AlUla Jayco) won the sprint from the bunch behind to round out the podium, a really nice effort from her.

[womensworldtour]

The final stage of Tour of Britain Women seemed like it was going to be another SD Worx show of force. After a miserably cold and rainy day, the break had been caught, and just outside the 3km mark, the third-place rider on GC, Letizia Paternoster (Liv-AlUla-Jayco) had a terribly timed rear wheel flat. Lotte Kopecky, dominant as always, was leading it out, with Lorena Wiebes and other teammates behind her. And then this happened:

SD Worx was apparently going for Christine Majerus, which would have been a great victory for her in her last season. Kopecky had to actually freewheel most of the last 200m because she was so much father ahead. With Lorena Wiebes just behind her, Majerus started celebrating before the line, and Paternoster's teammate Ruby Roseman-Gannon pipped her on the line with a bike throw!

We have to feel bad for Majerus and her team that set her up for the stage win, but haven't we already learned enough to ride through the line? Photographers can get great celebration pictures of any rider after the finish line that look just as good as celebration pictures at or before the line. Stop doing this already! But at least Majerus had the consolation of moving up into third overall, thanks to the bonus seconds and Paternoster's terrible mechanical luck. (Majerus looked somewhat chagrined on the podium.)

We feel much better for Roseman-Gannon for driving to the line, and glad that her team was able to pivot from Paternoster's misfortune and go for Roseman-Gannon's stage victory. Well done, and it's always nice to avoid a sweep by one of the super-teams, even if it's unintentional. And congrats to Anna Henderson, who rode into second on Stage 2 and held that lead, racing for her national Team Great Britain, it's nice to see a country represented in the race it hosts.

[womensworldtour]

They call her the GOAT for a reason! When Shirin van Androoij (Lidl-Trek) broke away from the other five leaders, Marianne Vos (Visma-Lease-a-Bike) was the only one fast enough to respond and go with her on the winning move of Dwars door Vlaanderen.

As van Androoij's teammate Elisa Longo Borghini sat on in the group of Lotte Kopecky (SD Worx-ProTime), Puck Pieterse (Fenix-Deceunick), and Letizia Paternoster (Liv AlUla - Jayco), Vos and van Androoij powered away, until it was clear that the victory would be down to the two. Van Androoij stopped cooperating with Vos with a couple kilometers left, but there was no stopping Vos, who led out the sprint and won by a bike length.

Paternoster was the fastest of the group behind, winning the sprint for the last step on the podium ahead of Kopecky.

[womensworldtour]

Tour de France Femmes - Stage 5

After four stages and three days, the Tour de France Femmes finally crossed into France, where it would finish in Amneville. This was a lumpy stage with five categorized climbs, and many teams had breakaway ambitions. The strongest of the breakaway attempts was a trio of strong riders up the road in the latter half of the race. Fem van Empel (Visma Lease-a-Bike), Loes Adegeest (FDJ-Suez), and Julie Van de Wilde (AG Insurance-Soudal) worked together well and stayed away for a long time, with van Empel scooping up the bonus seconds near the end. The biggest news from this portion was how much Gaia Realini (Lidl-Trek) appeared to be struggling at the back on the short climbs, not a good sign for her GC prospects before we even got to the mountains.

The story of this stage, however, was not one of the breakaway versus the peloton, but of the cruelty of this sport. In an unassuming curve 6km from the finish, a relatively high-speed crash in the main bunch took down some of the top riders, including yellow jersey wearer Demi Vollering (SD Worx-Protime), Ruby Roseman-Gannon (Liv-AlUla-Jayco), polka-dot jersey Puck Piertese (Fenix-Deceuninck), and Pfeiffer Georgi (dsm-firmenich-postNL). It was a bad crash, with some riders taking a long time to get up and others—including Georgi—not getting up at all, abandoning the race. The images of the crash were not pretty, and we will not reproduced them here.

Vollering was up relatively quickly, but didn't get back on the bike for a while, as she looked to be in pain and had visible tears in her shorts showing road rash on her hip. With the crash outside the 5km mark, all Vollering could do was remount and try to chase back on. We don't even think she got a bike change, and she didn't have any teammates to help her for quite a while, until she reached Mischa Bredewold who could help pull her on the flats.

Up ahead, the parts of the peloton that had survived the crash soon caught the breakaway, and Kristen Faulkner (EF-Oatly-Cannondale) sparked the winning move off the front. Only Blanka Vas (SD Worx-Protime), Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM), and Liane Lippert (Movistar) could join. As they came into the sprint, Lippert attacked from behind, but Niewiadoma and Vas jumped quickly on her wheel and came past her, with Vas the faster of the two. Vas' reaction shows her mixed emotions on the day for Team SD Worx-Protime.

Behind, it was a race against the clock, as Demi Vollering fought to limit her time losses. She was moving quickly, but was in visible pain at the line and after the stage, though she did her cooldown as usual on the stationary bike.

Although Kasia Niewiadoma didn't win the sprint for the stage, she moved into the lead on GC after her strong performance yesterday and today, and will wear yellow tomorrow. We can't feel bad about Niewiadoma in yellow, she certainly deserves it, but even she would probably admit this isn't how she would prefer to take it.

We're a little disheartened with this crash, and hope the riders will recover. Like we said above, this is a cruel sport sometimes, and it's very off-putting. Not everyone was badly hurt—Puck Pieterse was walking around with seemingly boundless energy, throwing flowers to the crowd, despite skinning her chin, hands, and knees. But the overhead images of Pfeiffer Georgi will stay with us for a while, and only time will tell how well Vollering will be able to recover before tomorrow's increasingly mountainous course.

[womensworldtour]

SD Worx continue their domination, as Lorena Wiebes takes her turn atop the podium at Tour of Britain Women.

It sure helps when you have the world champion and race leader giving you a lead-out!

Charlotte Kool (DSM-Firmenich PostNL) was second on the stage, with Georgia Baker (Liv-AlUla-Jayco) in third.

Just a reminder, the stages are all being broadcast live on YouTube!

[womensworldtour]

Last week Mavi García finally returned to the top step of a World Tour podium, winning GC in the Vuelta Ciclista Andalucia Women. And she had company there with her teammates, Silke Smulders and Ella Wyllie!

It's nice to see García back to her winning ways, and Liv-AlUla-Jayco had a lot of fun in this race. First, Smulders took the first stage in a two-rider breakaway with García, with Wyllie in third:

Then Garcí won Stage 2:

And it was Wyllie's turn for Stage 3 (you can see her teammates celebrating in the background):

To be fair, the depth of competition wasn't the deepest at Andalucia, without Lidl-Trek or SD Worx-Protime there. But the three Liv riders built an impressive lead over the rest of the GC contenders, more than three minutes back. That has to feel good for the team, and bodes well for the team's future to have promising young talents working so well with the veteran García.

[womensworldtour]

So far, the Tour of Britain Women has been the Lotte Kopecky show! Taking both the first two stages, Kopecky (SD Worx-Protime) shows us why she's the reigning world champion. She had to work for it, however—Stage 1 was won on a bike throw ahead of Letizia Paternoster (Liv-AlUla-Jayco), who thought she had won for a moment, but it turned out Kopecky had timed her throw perfectly.

Stage 2 was more decisive, as she and Anna Henderson (Team Great Britain) went to the line in a two-up sprint, and despite Henderson's cagey refusal to lead it out, Kopecky accelerated and easily out-sprinted Henderson, who has been quite competitive in this race so far and moves into second.

All stages of this race are being streamed live on YouTube, by the way, with nice highlights released the next day. Kudos to the organizers for doing that. The sights of the course through Wales have been great.

[womensworldtour]

Tour de France Femmes - Stage 2

Another sprint stage, a short one this time in the morning of day 2 before this evening's ITT. Only 68km from Dortrecht to Rotterdam, pancake flat, no mountains points—please forgive us if we think these sorts of stages are boring.

If you like windmills or Dutch road infrastructure, there's a lot to see in flat Dutch stages. If you don't care about traffic calming or pedestrian islands or raised crosswalks or trams or continuous sidewalks, then there really wasn't much to watch in this stage until the end.

For the better part of an hour and a half, the most interesting thing to happen were a few minor crashes in the bunch with touches of wheels, or Tashkent riders getting dropped off the back, and no one wants to see that. If you only caught the last 10km (or even 3km, to be honest) we wouldn't blame you.

Fast forward to the end, then, which certainly was exciting, a full bunch sprint after winding through narrow roads and roundabouts on the entrance to Rotterdam. The irony of the Netherlands is that the very bike paths and road furniture that make the country great for average people to bike make it a challenging place to race for the pro peloton. Most of the sprint teams got their riders through a series of turns and across several bridges safely, but crash near the front on one of the biggest bridges took Ruby Roseman-Gannon (Liv-AlUla-Jayco) out of contention and split the group in half.

Team SD Worx-Protime led in the approach with Blanka Vas and Team dsm-firmenich-postNL did the same with Pfeiffer Georgi, and when the sprinters lit their candles, Charlotte Kool came up on the right-hand side, slipped past Marianne Vos (Visma-Lease-a-Bike) and slingshotted around Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx-Protime) to take her second Tour de France Femmes stage in a row!

Kool and Wiebes were a couple bike lengths ahead of Vos, who was in turn a couple bike lengths ahead of Lotta Henttala (EF-Oatly-Cannondale) and Elisa Balsamo (Lidl-Trek). These are the best sprinters in the world right now, and seeing them go head-to-head almost makes the back-to-back sprint stages worth it.

More racing later today in what they are calling Stage 3.

[womensworldtour]

It seemed like the only question was how SD Worx-Protime would win Itzulia Women, not if the team would win, so dominant it has been in this race since it was first held. The answer, it came today, was with Demi Vollering in a scorching mountain solo attack that no one could answer, and a 30km breakaway.

Fellow SD Worx teammate Mischa Bredewold, who had held the flourescent yellow jersey since stage 1, took second on GC, with Juliette Labous (DSM-Firmenich PostNL) in third. It had been a real battle for the bottom step on podium, with Mavi Garcia (Liv AlUla Jayco), Elise Chabbey (Canyon-SRAM), and Olivia Baril (Movistar) mere seconds behind.

[womensworldtour]

Tour de France Femmes - Stage 1

It's finally here, the biggest stage race on the Women's World Tour calendar, le Tour de France Femmes (avec Zwift, if you prefer). This was a true sprint stage, pancake flat, with the only climb with mountain points coming over a bridge as the riders rode *up* to sea level!

In terms of excitement, it was admittedly a snoozer, with few attacks, no cross-winds, and the bunch all coming in together. Commentators were reduced to following the occasional rider coming back to the bunch from mechanical.

As the peloton wound its way into The Hague, the speed predictably picked up, with the last kilometer being raced at more than 60kph. In a chaotic finish with what seemed like a premature launch, Charlotte Kool (dsm-firmenich-postNL) had a phenomenal kick and won the sprint by about three bike-lengths, a fantastic result for a rider who had a rough season so far.

It does seem fitting to have a Dutch rider winning the first stage in the Netherlands, although the betting odds might have been on Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx-Protime). However, Wiebes appeared to have had a late mechanical and wasn't able to contest the sprint. The closest riders to Kool were Anniina Ahtosalo (Uno X-Mobiliy), Elisa Balsamo (Lidl-Trek), and Lotta Henttala (EF-Oatly-Cannondale), and Marianne Vos (Visma Lease-a-Bike). It's kind of fun that Team dsm-firmenich-postNL won the first stage in the Tour de France Femmes and the Tour de France Hommes (with Romain Bardet) this year.

Cristina Tonetti (Labora Kutxa-Fundacion Euskadi) won the "mountain" points climb over Ruby Roseman-Gannon (Liv-AlUla-Jayco) and landed in the polka-dot jersey, a nice day for her and her team!

And Anniina Ahtosalo (Uno-X Mobility) wears the white jersey, a nice reward for her second-place finish! (Strong Finnish representation in that final sprint, by the way.)

And so Charlotte Kool takes the first yellow jersey for this year's TdFF. She actually takes the green jersey as well, though she'll loan it out tomorrow.

Speaking of tomorrow, Tuesday will see the peculiar double stage day, with a short sprint stage in the morning and a short ITT in the evening. (Pour one out for the team mechanics, they're going to be working overtime tonight and tomorrow!) These split stages are weird, we've see them in races like Baloise Ladies Tour, but not the Tour. However, the organizers wanted to keep eight stages, even though they were constrained on the calendar by the Paris Olympics, and this was the solution. Kool could keep the yellow jersey through Stage 2, but it might be a taller order to keep the jersey after the ITT on Stage 3.