It’s not all about winning
Finding other success at the Tour of Scandinavia
HI!
You didn’t expect us to be hitting your inbox today did you? WELL the reason for it is that over at WCW Towers (yes, we are now officially calling it that) Tilda and I have been discussing ideas for ✨ additional content ✨ for the newsletter that might tickle your fancy on top of the regular weekly!
We’re on Slack, now — haven’t you heard?
From today, we’ll be sending out an additional issue on top of the regular one which will come in the form of either a long-form piece of writing from one of us (or even a guest writer — exciting!) or, in the future, interviews and other exciting bits and bobs 🤠.
Is there a catch for this ramp up in hash-tag-content coming from us? Well, kinda. While we ALWAYS want to keep the main newsletter free (its existence is, after all, about promoting women’s racing as far and wide as poss!) we can’t use our time to expand WCW for free all of the time. So, from next week we will be introducing a new paid tier of WCW which will include these extra bits (known at WCW Towers as ‘addish content’) that you can get for literally £1 a week.
I know lots of you have already given generously to the Ko-Fi page and for that I cannot thank you enough!! WCW exists because of you guys (literally because without that there’s no Tilda and without Tilda there’s no WCW) and from now all of that will be directed towards membership instead.
To be clear: there is absolutely NO obligation to sign up for this and, if you don’t, you’ll keep getting the regular newsletter as usual!! But we would be extremely grateful for your support if you do join and you’ll be rewarded with lots of lovely women’s cycling content that you can’t get anywhere else!
So, if you like what you see below (honestly it’s a great piece, Tilda is fab) then please consider becoming a paid WCW subscriber!
Thanks so much
Amy and Tilda x
It wasn’t all about the winners at the Tour of Scandinavia
by Tilda Price
If you only looked at the results (in Women’s Cycling Weekly, of course) it would be easy to think that the inaugural Tour of Scandinavia was a bit of a Marianne Vos fest, punctuated by one sneaky win for Alex Manly and a climbing stage victory that earned Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig the overall title. And in simple terms, that’s what it was: Vos won four stages in a dominant fashion, and the GC was decided in the last 3km of the one real climb on the route. Even the mountains and sprints jerseys were taken by Amber Kraak and Alison Jackson on day one and never changed hands from then on. Looking at the race through that lens, you could say it wasn’t the most exciting competition ever.
However, however, cycling is about more than just winning, and it’s certainly about more than just the results that you read on paper. Outside the winners and outside the jerseys, there were plenty of stories, plenty of breakthrough rides, and plenty of results that can be taken as wins for young and upcoming riders. In case you got a bit lost in the Mariannedinavia of it all, here are six other riders that impressed us over at WCW towers.
Megan Jastrab
The first stage brought the first stand-out result of the race when DSM’s Megan Jastrab finished second just behind (you guessed it) Vos in Helsingør. A talented and decorated track rider, Jastrab is a rider who kind of feels like she’s been around forever but when it comes to her road career, the 20-year-old is really just getting started and this was something of a breakthrough result. After becoming junior world champion in 2019, Jastrab’s senior career was derailed by the pandemic in 2020, and then she spent 2021 focused on the Tokyo Olympics. She admits that she’s struggled to find her way on the road, particularly after a scary crash in the Women’s Tour last year, so runner-up behind Vos on Tuesday feels like it could be the start of the next step for the young American.
One of the exciting things about a rider like Megan Jastrab is that she still has so much time to grow as a rider. She clearly has a good sprint, but she’s also spoken about how she enjoys the longer stage races, and she was getting involved in the Classics earlier this season. Finally finding her road legs and confidence, and with the team set to have a bit of a reshuffle of their riders and aims in 2023, it won’t be a surprise to see Jastrab improve on second place sometime soon.
Shari Bossuyt
It was Jastrab’s DSM squad that officially won the team classification thanks to strong performances from the American, Liane Lippert and Floortje Mackaij, but another team that really impressed last week was Canyon-SRAM. As well as placing Neve Bradbury in the top-10 on GC, a stand out result for the 2020 Zwift Academy winner, their developing sprinter Shari Bossuyt picked up three podium finishes and 15th overall.
When Marianne Vos was dominating the sprints, the competition really happened between the non-winners, and it’s safe to say 21-year-old Bossuyt proved to be the best of the rest in Scandinavia. Canyon-SRAM have sometimes been a little directionless in the sprints this season, with Alice Barnes and Sarah Roy not quite in a position to be up there, but Bossuyt looks like she’s ready to be the next best fastwoman for the team.
A question we were pondering on stage 5: what could Shari Bossuyt have done if she hadn’t put in a monster turn for Bradbury in the first half of the climb? After the effort she put in for her team, the Belgian lost just under three minutes on the climb, could she have limited that by riding a bit more conservatively? After her three podiums, a top-10 or top-20 finish on that stage and a good GC result would have really elevated her Scandinavian performance. Ultimately, Canyon-SRAM have nothing to complain about or think ‘what if’ about that day, as Bradbury did well and they came away with the white jersey (Bossuyt was second in the classification) - but it certainly makes me want to see more of what Bossuyt can do in stage races and the shorter climbs.
Tamara Dronova
A lot of praise has - rightly - gone to Alex Manly for her impressive versatility across the race’s sprint stages and the climbing, but a rider who had a similar run of results, minus winning, was Roland Cogeas Edelweiss’s Tamara Dronova. Dronova finished fourth overall after coming in the top 10 in four stages, including atop the Norefjell climb. New to the WorldTour this year, Roland Cogeas Edelweiss are a bit of a mystery sometimes, but Dronova is very much proving why and how she is the best rider on their roster this season.
The 29-year-old Russian rider comes from a track background, and only started racing on the road at UCI level in 2020, where she picked up some top results and wins racing in Turkey. She’s often spotted in the sprints, but is also a strong climber, as her results in races like the Vuelta a Burgos and the Tour de France show. Rather than being a dark horse, Dronova’s repeated good results should now be putting her in people’s minds, and she still has plenty of time and room to improve, particularly if the team can bolster their line up going into 2023.
[Amy note: do we think her nationality plays a role here in the downplaying (intentional or otherwise) of her results?]
Eva van Agt
Some good riders suffer a bit from the ‘PCS effect’ - when their on-paper results don’t quite reflect their ability - [Amy note: adding ‘PCS effect’ to my vocab!!] and Eva van Agt is definitely at risk of that at this race. But fortunately I am here to tell you otherwise! After making the move from field hockey to cycling, Van Agt joined Le Col-Wahoo earlier this year, and has been thrown in the deep end a bit, racing the Tour de France Femmes as her first-ever WWT stage race. In France, Van Agt was often seen rubbing shoulders with the best and sticking with the race deep into the decisive stages, and that was the same in Scandinavia. She was the final Le Col Wahoo rider on the climb on stage 5 and finished 16th, coming over the line with Floortje Mackaij.
If you weren’t looking out for her, you might have missed the impressive rides Van Agt was putting in both for herself and in support of Gladys Verhulst on the flatter days, but once I noticed her, I couldn't stop noticing her in the race’s key moments. Just this week, Le Col-Wahoo confirmed they had re-signed Van Agt for next year, so they clearly see her strengths, too. If she can ride like this just a few months into her career, who knows what she will do with some more racing and experience in her legs.
Josie Nelson
As the longest running Norwegian team in the peloton, Coop Hitec Products came to the Tour of Scandinavia with hopes to do something on home turf. A small and young team who are often punching above their weight, this wasn’t an easy ask, but we’d say they achieved it with Josie Nelson’s impressive ride on stage 5. After being in the breakaway all day on stage 3, Nelson went on to finish fourth on the Norefjell climb, winning the sprint from the chasers and taking easily her best WorldTour result yet. At only 20, Nelson is a very young rider and this is her first full season in the European peloton, but she’s been getting stuck in with several top-20 results. It’s not obvious what type of rider Nelson is going to be - she has a good sprint, but can clearly climb well
Plus, we loved team manager Karl Lima’s sneaky motivation.
Emilie Moberg
Now, it might be pushing it to include a rider who didn’t even actually ride the race in this list, but we do what we want at WCW, right? [Amy note: um, yes!] Someone who undeniably brightened up this race - literally, thanks to her bright yellow chicken costume - was Emilie Moberg, Le Col-Wahoo rider and daughter of the Tour of Scandinavia organiser Roy Moberg. Now 31, Moberg is a stalwart of the peloton and one of its most successful Norwegian riders. After suffering a concussion during Paris Roubaix at the end of 2021, she’s had to sit out all of this season so far whilst she recovers, but that didn’t stop her joining in on the fun at the Tour of Scandinavia.
It must have been hard for Moberg to sit out of not only her home race but her family race, but she turned all of that potential FOMO into joyful support for the race and her fellow riders. As the competition played out on the road, something about Emilie Moberg running alongside the peloton in a ridiculous chicken suit reminded us of the reason we and all the racers are all here: a pure love of cycling. Among the seriousness of it all, it’s sometimes nice to remember that women’s cycling is really built on passion and enthusiasm, and that that still lives on even as the sport becomes more professionalised. Basically, more chickens and mooses at races, please.
Before the Tour of Scandinavia, I tweeted that I am 100% a stage racing girl, which I appreciate is a hot take when races like Roubaix and Flanders exist, and nearly spelled the end WCW but the crux of this piece is why I love them. More so than one-days and big Classics, stage races offer chances for new riders to have a go, we get to see different names doing things, and often you get to watch a rider develop and gain confidence day by day.
Fortunately for me, the WorldTour calendar has gone stage racing crazy this year, and we still have THREE more before the year is out. Not sure anyone has ever been actively excited about the Simac Ladies Tour, but I certainly am.
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If you have any feedback then please,
Unbelievable, the selfie stick exactly wrong...
Otherwise, nice to get to faces with names and demonstrating that fun is not verboten.
cheers
Loved the TDFF pictures. (And captions...) Marvellous composition of each one!!