On the earth of sports activities, some athletes get extra consideration than others. Nonetheless, {most professional} athletes conduct their careers considerably anonymously. Let’s take the chance to shine a lightweight on a few of the athletes in biking, particularly a few of the rising stars of the Simac Women tour.
What’s the Simac Women Tour?
The Simac Women Tour was based in 1998 and has taken place yearly since. Wim van Duivenbode and ladies’s coordinator Leo van der Wal on the time based the tour. They believed {that a} area just like the Netherlands had an excessive amount of biking expertise to not host its personal biking tour. Whereas massive money-making sports activities like soccer or basketball garner plenty of media consideration — and even BETMGM has stay betting for them — for sports activities like biking, there isn’t almost the identical consideration. Nonetheless, this prestigious race is an annual occasion that works to showcase a few of the world’s greatest feminine biking expertise.
The stage schedule options a number of dash levels, 6–7 levels total, and not less than one time trial by means of the gorgeous hills of the Netherlands. The occasion has featured athletes akin to Petra Rossner and Susanne Ljungskog. Ina Yoko-Teutenerg holds the document for probably the most stage victories to her title — a whopping 14!
The tour is a big problem, particularly the sixth and closing stage, which may be very hilly. With that mentioned, the Simac Women Tour remains to be a rising tour, and in 2023, it options quite a lot of thrilling younger and upcoming abilities. Nonetheless, they aren’t at all times talked about. This 12 months’s occasion went to Lorena Wiebes, our first function athlete.
Lorena Wiebes
Wiebes was the tour’s reigning champion in 2022 earlier than Lotte Kopecky of Germany defeated her within the 2023 occasion. Nonetheless, Wiebes stays one of the thrilling cyclists on this planet. To name her a rising star might look like a stretch, contemplating that she has participated within the Simec Women Tour levels since 2019. Nonetheless, she stays a rising expertise. Her victory on the 2023 Simec Women Tour was thrilling, ending in Mischa Bredewold taking her first-ever Girls’s World Tour victory, however with total classification going to Wiebes.
Higher but, she is a Dutch nationwide bringing super nationwide satisfaction to the tour. Wiebes at the moment rides for UCI Girls’s World Group SD Worx after spending her first two skilled years with Parkhotel Valkenburg and the subsequent two with Group Sunweb. She has 12 main wins, alongside together with her 2022 Simec Women tour win and 2023 runner-up end.
Anna Henderson
Like Wiebes, Henderson isn’t the youngest rider within the sport at 24 years previous. Not like Wiebes, her profile has been rising extra just lately. Wiebes has been biking professionally since 2018, however Henderson solely just lately started as Wiebe’s teammate in 2020 with Group Sunweb earlier than transferring to Group Jumbo-Visma in 2021.
Hailing from Nice Britain, Henderson received the British Nationwide Circuit Race Championships in 2019 and the under-23 British Time Trial Championships in 2019. She has only one main win up to now however completed in third place on the 2023 Simec Women Tour.
Mischa Bredewold
One other Dutch nationwide, this 23-year-old rides for SD Worx after a three-year stint with Parkhotel Valkenburg. Whereas she hasn’t completed on the rostrum on the Simec Women Tour, she has taken levels on the occasion.
Bredewold is an extremely inspiring story — arguably a miracle in and of itself. She started racing in 2017, however her profession was placed on maintain in 2018 when she was hit by a truck whereas coaching for the Dutch junior group, getting ready for the 2018 UCI Street World Championships. She suffered a big mind damage, three damaged vertebrae, and 6 damaged ribs. Miraculously, and presumably with lots of post-operative physiotherapy, she absolutely recovered, ultimately signing with Parkhotel Valkenburg in 2021. She has one main win, taking the European Street Race Championship this 12 months.
Eleonora Gasparrini
Eleonora Gasparrini took second place on this 12 months’s tour’s sixth and closing stage — certainly one of her stronger outcomes. At simply 21 years previous, Gasparrini is only some years into her profession and the youngest girl on our checklist. The Italian bicycle owner rides for UCI Girls’s World Group UAE and Group ADQ. She debuted again in 2021 for Valcar-Journey & Service.
She had a stable junior profession, profitable the junior highway race on the 2020 European Street Championships, and has received occasions in 2021 and 2022 as a monitor bicycle owner.
Conclusion: What To Count on in 2024
The Simac Women Tour is a dynamic occasion that includes a few of the greatest cyclists on this planet and solely seems to get higher. Within the years to come back, Dutch followers can count on to see their nation’s greatest athletes competing on the highest stage. And they’ll doubtless see lots of the athletes on this checklist.
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