Your Monday Briefing

Antonia Niedermaier has extended her contract with CANYON//SRAM ZondaCrypto through the end of 2028. Antonia first joined CANYON//SRAM Generation (the team’s development squad) for the 2022 season. After finishing school that May, she officially launched her elite racing career, quickly making an impact with a string of impressive performances. Within months, she secured two stage wins and claimed the overall title at the Tour de l’Ardèche. Endurance sport has long been a part of Antonia’s life, but not initially on two wheels. In 2019, she began competing in ski mountaineering, a demanding discipline that combines alpine climbing and skiing. She quickly made a name for herself, earning a bronze medal at the Junior World Championships in her debut major event, and representing Germany at the 2020 Winter Youth Olympic Games.

Marianne Vos (Visma | Lease a Bike) showcased her UCI Gravel World Champion’s jersey for the first time last weekend, clinching victory at the 3RIDES Aachen, the German leg of the UCI Gravel World Series. The 122 km race unfolded on a 61 km loop featuring 65% gravel and 790 metres of elevation gain per lap. She completed the course in 3 hours, 37 minutes, and 10 seconds, finishing 2 minutes and 25 seconds ahead of a three-rider chase group.

In the final 20km of the second stage of the Tour of Britain, AG Insurance-Soudal’s Gladys Verhulst-Wild suffered eight rib fractures, a collapsed lung and a fractured humeral head. The winner of the opening stage at the Tour of Britain Kim Pienaar also had to abandon on the final part of stage 3 due to the effects of a crash she had sustained earlier, while Mara Roldan of Team Picnic PostNL suffered a broken femur in a rain soaked stage and had to undergo surgery. We wish all riders a speedy and complete recovery.

A new sponsor will join FDJ-SUEZ starting 25 June. Gan Assurances (Groupama) will become a major partner of the team for the next three years. Their logo will appear prominently on the sleeves and the right chest of the jersey.

The Grand Départ of the 2026 Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift will take place in Switzerland. Stage 1 will start in Lausanne and cover a 137km route tailored to puncheurs, featuring rolling terrain and short, sharp climbs. Stage 2 departs from Aigle and concludes in Geneva after 150km, offering a flatter profile ideal for the sprinters. Stage 3 will then also set off from Geneva with the race heading back toward the French border via a yet-to-be-announced route. The TDFF will run from 1 to 9 August 2026.

The UCI has announced new information about the 2025 UCI Cycling Esports World Championships, the fifth edition of the event, which will take place on 15 November at the Space 42 Arena in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The 40 finalists (20 men and 20 women) will be decided during semi-finals which, like last year, will feature up to 150 male and 150 female athletes from around the world competing virtually for the right to participate in the Grand Final in Abu Dhabi.

The fatal cycling accidents in UCI races in Switzerland in recent years, including the tragic death of Muriel Furrer in 2024, have sparked major discussions about safety in cycling. Olivier Senn, the director of the men’s Tour de Suisse, which begins next week, now wants to take the lead and is therefore introducing, as the first cycling race in the world, comprehensive rider and convoy tracking as well as a mobile safety centre. The organisers have explained in a statement: “To locate the professional riders, each bicycle will be equipped with a small GPS tracker that triggers an alarm in case of certain irregularities. All the information is gathered in the safety centre. From there, we can monitor the entire situation and intervene immediately, if necessary. This means an alarm will be triggered if any GPS tracker stops moving for more than 30 seconds, if there is an abnormal change in speed, or if a tracker deviates from the designated course. While GPS tracking has been used in races for live timing, this is the first time full real-time tracking of all riders combined with an integrated alarm system is being implemented in cycling.