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Get your week started with the latest news in women’s cycling

• Belgian champion and Liv Cycling rider Lotte Kopecky has signed with Team SDWorx for three years starting January 2022.
• The Tour de Suisse Women’s race has launched a campaign under the motto “Fast and Female” to move women’s cycling forward by asking everyone to collect kilometres on their bikes. You can see how many kilometres have been collected right here.
• The route for the Giro Donne has been officially announced at a live-streamed presentation. 144 riders from 24 teams will take on the 1000km-long course in the northern part of Italy. The race will traverse the regions of Piedmont, Lombardy, Veneto, and Friuli-Venezia Giulia.
• The UCI has announced that the Track Cycling World Championships scheduled for October in Turkmenistan have been cancelled due to COVID-19. The UCI is currently attempting to find new venues for the event
• Nathalie Clauwaert will become the new director of Belgian Cycling as of October 1. She will be the first woman to hold this position and she hopes to modernise the organisation and make it more transparent.
• Cyclo-cross world champion Lucinda Brand has extended with Trek-Segafredo and Baloise Trek Lions for a further two years.
• Joss Lowden of the British team Drops-Le Col p/b Tempur will make an attempt to break the women’s hour record in Switzerland later this year. In February, during a training ride, the 33 year-old unofficially broke the current record of Victoria Busse from 2018.
• The European Cycling Union has announced that the Track Championships will be rescheduled to the second week of October and the host city will be decided in the next few days.
• Five-time UCI BMX and Track world Champion Shanaze Reade will be the first of a series of ambassadors for the 2023 Cycling World Championships in Scotland. She is very passionate about helping young people and dismantling barriers that prevent people from diverse backgrounds from riding bikes.
• Ivan Basso and Albert Contador’s team Eoko-Kometa are aiming to establish a women’s team.
• Liv Cycling and performance manager, former pro rider Lars Boom, have parted ways with immediate effect. The Dutch outfit is also developing a new coaching program and structure to ensure the optimal support of its riders, to be ready for an ambitious 2022 season.
• The UCI has released its official WT calendar for 2022: the Tour de France Femmes is scheduled to run from 24 to 31 July 2022, while the Giro Donne is listed as having WWT status in 2022. The Ladies Tour of Norway will be re-named “Battle of the North” and will run for six stays, while the Ceratizit Challenge by La Vuelta will be extended to four days.
• Barbados national champion Amber Joseph will be a guest rider with L39ION of Los Angeles. The 21 year old was born in Barbados and became a track racer when she moved to the U.K. She was particularly drawn to the team’s progressive philosophy, which was important to the rider from the Caribbean island in her decision to join the squad.
• The Transcontinental Race, an ultra-endurance race which crosses Europe has been cancelled for the second year in a row due to COVID-19. The last edition’s winner, German doctor Fiona Kolbinger, rode more than 4,000 km, taking 10 days, 2 hours and 48 minutes to complete the journey.
• The UCI has set out the details of it new sustainability strategy, which will target carbon neutrality as well as increased equality and diversity. Measures to achieve its goals include the use of electric vehicles during professional racing and the promotion of cycling as a sustainable mode of transport to combat climate change and improve health.
• The Canadian continental team InstaFund Racing will implement measures that aim to reduce their carbon footprint when racing nationally and internationally. The team’s goal is to be carbon-neutral by next year.
• British Cycling has set a goal of increasing the number of people competing in bike racing. Specifically, it wants to grow the number of women competing by 40 per cent. The “Everybody Wins” campaign will try to get more riders from diverse backgrounds into the sport and will offer events that suit riders of all levels from beginners to experts.

Results

Dwars Door het Hageland: Chantal van den Broek-Blaak (Team SD Worx), Christine Majerus (Team SD Worx), Lorena Wiebes (Team DSM).

Tour de Suisse Women
Stage 1: Elise Chabbey (Canyon//SRAM), Elizabeth Deignan (Trek-Segafredo), Marlen Reusser (Alé BTC Ljubljana)
Stage 2: Marta Bastianelli (Alé BTC Ljubljana), Tereza Neumanova (Women Cycling Team), Hannah Barnes (Canyon//SRAM Racing)
GC: Elizabeth Deignan, Elise Chabbey, Marlen Reusser

Zwift Blog

Lauren Kitchen

“On my terms, when the time is right for me. Just over a week ago it was officially announced that I am retiring from pro cycling. I’m really happy to be retiring with a passion for the sport still with me and a drive and curiosity for the next chapter of my life.” In her latest blog, Lauren Kitchen reflects on her long career in the pro peloton, and tells us what’s next for her. Have a read here.

Megan Jastrab

Team DSM rider Megan Jastrab talks about her long road to recovery following COVID. Read her latest blog here

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This week in cycling history

Maria Canins

Born on 4 June 1949, the now 72-year-old Italian was a talented athlete, excelling as a champion skier, runner and cyclist. She was one of the most successful riders during the 1980s, winning the Grande Boucle twice after only taking up riding at the age of 32. Canins also won the Trofeo Alfredo Binda four times, a feat that has only been matched by Marianne Vos. When asked, she admitted that she preferred the racing style of the 1980s, when riders did not receive instructions through an earpiece but rather had to read the race themselves and ride intelligently. These days she still rides her bike several times a week and is involved as a cycle tour guide in the Dolomites where she lives

Edwige Pitel

Born on 4 June 1967, Pitel is a French rider who most recently rode for the UCI Women’s Continental Team Cogeas-Mettler-Look. She was the winner of the 2003 ITU Duathlon world Championships, an event that involves a continuous run-cycle-run course. After that win, however, she concentrated on road cycling, winning multiple national road and time trial titles and before retiring at 52 was the oldest competitor on the circuit. In her later years, she raced without a salary but purely because she was still very passionate about riding and competing. Outside of the sport, Pitel earned a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Imperial College in 1994.