INTERVIEW: LORENA WIEBES
In just two years, Lorena Wiebes has rapidly broken through as one of the fastest sprinters in the world. Still only aged 21, the Dutchwoman tells Procycling about joining Team DSM and her Olympic dream
The Dutch sprinter tells Procycling about her rapid ascent to the very top of the sport
Some riders retire without ever having won a race. Others have to fight their whole career to get the taste of victory just a few times. But there are also riders who seem to have been born to win. After three seasons as a pro, Lorena Wiebes can count herself as one of the latter. She doesn’t turn 22 until 17 March, but already Wiebes has 23 wins under her belt. She only needed 98 race days to get there, to be precise. In other words: about every one in four days of racing, Wiebes was able to cross the finish line with her hands in the air in first place. That may be described as impressive.
It’s especially impressive for a rider who was still playing football up until age 15. Wiebes had, however, discovered the bike by then, but with mixed results. The real flame was yet to be lit. “I started cycling because of my father, who used to ride in triathlons,” Wiebes tells Procycling. “One day he came home with a BMX and I would ride it every Sunday morning around the course at the local cycling club. At first I really didn’t like cycling on the road. I was done with that for a while, after I had a bad fall during a club race.
“I would get knocked over a lot during football - even as a footballer I was quite quick - and my father encouraged me to try cycling again. This time around I did enjoy it and I had gotten over my fear of falling. I would usually belong in the middle bracket when it came to cyclocross. So I thought: maybe I have more talent on the road than cross. And I was right. I won my first races as a second year junior.”
Wiebes can’t remember how she found out she was good at sprinting. Perhaps the gymnastics classes she took in her younger years had something to do with her explosiveness, she thinks. Either way, she belonged to the ranking of the fastest sprinters of her generation and was scouted by Liv-Plantur, the predecessor of Team Sunweb, as a second year junior.
“I participated in their talent days, but noticed that it was still too big a step up for me. At that time I still saw road cycling mainly as something fun, and wasn’t at all concerned about serious training and nutrition. I did what I liked. That’s why, in 2018, I chose to go pro and join Parkhotel Valkenburg. Of course there were moments where it was serious, but I was still free to do my own thing and develop myself further.”
Wiebes had no clue what to expect from her baptism of fire in the women’s peloton in 2018. She was hoping to finish in the top 20 at least once in her debut season. Yet remarkably, this personal goal was already achieved by her second race when she finished 11th at Omloop van het Hageland. A top-10 position and podium place were not far off, at her next races. In the summer of 2018 she achieved her first highly ranked win, by taking on and beating not only Jolien D’Hoore, but also Marianne Vos and Marta Bastianelli during stage 2a of the Boels Ladies Tour.
“No, I wasn’t too cautious with my goal setting for my first year,” says Wiebes. “I didn’t want to put too much pressure on myself but I was learning quicker than I thought. I really felt like I could do it at the end of 2018, when I won my first stage race in the WorldTour, because of my wins during the sprints.”
Her big breakthrough came a year later. In 2019, Wiebes became Dutch national champion, as well as European Games champion. She won one-day races, such as Nokere Koerse and the Prudential RideLondon Classic. And she won stages at the Boels Ladies Tour, plus all three stages and the general classification at the Tour of Chongming Island in China.
“To start with, I would adjust my sprint to the top favourites. I would choose to position myself on their wheel and wait for them to start the sprint. Due to the confidence I had built up in 2018, I decided the year after to take the initiative, exactly how I had always done as a junior. And it worked.
“The best win was the Dutch National Championships, where we rode a really good race as a team with Parkhotel, and
I was able to finish it during the sprint,” she says.
Her results sparked the interest of a host of different top teams and Wiebes herself also felt it was time to take the next step in her career. But her contract was not up until 2021, and Parkhotel wasn’t going to just give up their showpiece rider who also happened to be waering the national champion’s jersey. In the run-up to the 2020 season, Wiebes refused to ride any races for Parkhotel Valkenburg and this led to a conflict between rider and team management. For a short period it looked like she would be unable to race for the first part of 2020, but in the end both parties came to a compromise. The talented sprinter would ride in the Parkhotel jersey for six more months, and would be able to make a transfer to a new team in the summer.
“It’s very sad it went like that,” reflects Wiebes on this heavy period. “It did not go as I would have wanted. There were a lot of emotions on both sides. Parkhotel had helped me for two years and I them. Luckily we were able to come to a professional solution. Due to the coronavirus outbreak last year, I only rode two more races for Parkhotel. The last one of which, Omloop van het Hageland, I won. I was glad to finish that way and be able to give something back to the team.”
On 1 June 2020, while racing had come to a halt due to the worldwide pandemic and teams were preparing for the restart of a revised season, Wiebes made the longawaited move to Sunweb. “It was time to make the next step, to the even more serious and professional work. At Sunweb they want to make me into the best sprinter I can be. What does that mean in my eyes? Being unbeatable in a sprint. Whether it works, we will have to wait and see. I’m a real competition animal,” Wiebes says.
“I was struggling at the start of the corona pandemic when there were no races. It meant I had to train a lot more. But I started going to the Keep Challenging Centre in Limburg a lot more after my transfer to Sunweb. The team even has apartments you can stay at. From there I could train in the Limburgse hills of Belgium with a few team-mates. It was the first time I did endurance rides of six hours. I hadn’t ever done that before then, and they definitely made me stronger.
“I really noticed that when we started racing again in the autumn, such as during Challenge by La Vuelta. The finale of the first stage had a difficult and quite long uphill finish. I won with a comfortable lead, and that was my proof that I had taken another step up.”
“I’m a competition animal. I was struggling at the start of the corona pandemic when there were no races. It meant I had to train at home a lot more”
Another team also means another way of sprinting. Wiebes says she can best use her power on slightly uphill roads, and at Parkhotel she would usually have a team-mate lead her up until 500m from the finish, at which point she would go her own way and surf from one wheel to the other and would then launch into her final sprint. Team DSM, the successor of Sunweb, does it differently and works with a sprint train for both the men’s and women’s teams.
“That’s a very different way of sprinting for me. I really struggled to trust 100 per cent in the leadout during the first few races after the restart of last year’s season. When I felt like
I was already in the right position,
I still had to follow the leadout. It was especially weird during the Grote Prijs Euromat. I was dropped off perfectly at 200 to 150 metres by the little train and felt like I hardly needed to sprint at all. I wasn’t even that tired when I was the first to cross that finish line,” she laughs.
“We didn’t get the chance to do many leadouts last season, due to the lack of races. So I look forward to developing them in this season. Our goal is to put together a ‘super train’. Therefore we will look at what the men’s team are doing. That’s why we were analysing the sprints they did in the Tour de France last year. What they did well, what could be improved,” she continues.
“The coaches also share knowledge and experience between both teams. Working with leadouts gives another dimension to sprinting for me. And increases my chance of winning if
I am able to attack in different ways.”
Team DSM has another top sprinter in the ranks, with Coryn Rivera. But Lorena Wiebes does not want to speak of her as competition. In fact, she thinks the presence of the American team-mate will just make her even better. “Coryn is a different sprinter than I am. She didn’t win Ronde van Vlaanderen for nothing, she is a bit stronger in those types of difficult races. It’s just fun to race each other in training and to challenge each other. In the sprints especially you are getting your highest watts and it’s a good way to improve.” Wiebes, besides chasing personal success in the sprint, aims to be a domestique in some of the more difficult races this season, such as Flanders and Amstel Gold Race.
“For experience, to become stronger and with an eye on the future where I want to try and win some of these races. With my history in cyclo-cross, I am especially looking forward to ParisRoubaix. That should be very special. Last summer we rode a recon ride there and if it hadn’t been for the cancellation of the race, I would have raced. I’m not saying I can win Roubaix, but I hope to be there on the day.”
Getting stronger to be able to cope with the big races is also a high priority for Wiebes. For a few years now, what’s been playing on her mind are the Olympic Games in Paris in three years’ time. It’s not a coincidence she signed with Team DSM until 2024.
“It will be so nice to have security when we will be heading to the Games that year. I know the Games in Tokyo wouldn’t be for me, that’s why I’m focusing on Paris. It’s not like I think about it everyday, but it certainly is a dot in the horizon. As a sprinter, the ideal scenario would be that the finish will
be on the Champs-Élysées. But to be honest, I’m not expecting it. I think they will make the route a bit tougher. In the next few years I want to automatically work towards Paris, by developing my racing in the bigger races.
“I feel like I’m still in the talent phase. I still have so much to learn and I’m by no means at my peak. The plan is to keep taking more steps towards Paris with every season. I want to be one of the best riders in the world in 2024,” she says.
Cycling may be becoming more serious by the day in the life of Lorena Wiebes, but her playful character has certainly not been lost. Just look at her invariably coloured nails and her tattoos. Equally, getting used to the diet of a pro cyclist has taken some time. “I’m still not very good with looking after my nutrition. At the team we are working with a dietician, but I would like to make some strides in this area. And I definitely don’t want to go too far and eat too little.
“Back in the day, I would regularly drive by McDonald’s after a race or training. That still happens sometimes.
The flying Dutchwoman has been winning since turning pro The McFlurry is my alltime guilty pleasure. After the Challenge by La Vuelta, one of the team leaders jokingly said that during the off-season I was only allowed to eat at McDonald’s once a week. But I definitely didn’t do that.
“I think you are allowed to grant yourself something nice, when you’ve just done six long hours on a bike or you’ve just won a race. Just look at Mathieu van der Poel, he does the same.”
If her motivation to win stays as high as it has been the past few years, then Lorena Wiebe’s wins total won’t stay at 23 for much longer.
“Over time I have been looking a bit more closely at certain races, but at the end of the day I don’t mind whether I win a big or a small race; I just want to win.”
“Back in the day, I would regularly drive by McDonald’s after a race or training. That still happens sometimes. The McFlurry is my guilty pleasure”