Your Monday Briefing

Vittoria Guazzini has extended her contract with FDJ-SUEZ until the end of 2028. On the road, Guazzini already boasts an impressive track record. Crowned European U23 Time Trial Champion in 2021 and U23 World Champion in the same discipline in 2022, she also claimed the gold medal in the time trial at the 2022 Mediterranean Games. More recently, in 2024, she won Le Samyn des Dames, secured the national elite time trial title, and took victory in the first stage of the Tour Féminin International des Pyrénées. The rider from Pontedera in Italy has also made her mark on the track, becoming Olympic champion in the Madison at Paris 2024 alongside Chiara Consonni, and previously winning the team pursuit world title in 2022.

Lisa van Belle has joined Team SD Worx through the end of the 2026 season. The talented Dutch rider joins the squad from Belgian outfit Velopro–Alphamotorhomes and made her debut for the squad at La Vuelta Femenina. The addition of van Belle comes as the team seeks to strengthen the depth of its roster, following the recent retirement of Chantal van den Broek-Blaak and frequent challenges in filling start lists. In 2023, van Belle focused primarily on track cycling. Partnering with Maike van der Duin, she earned a bronze medal in the Madison at the Paris Olympics and captured the European Championship title in the same event on the track in Zolder. The team has also expressed full support for her continued ambitions on the track.

CANYON//SRAM Zondacrypto Generation has announced Italian off-road rider Valentina Corvi as the newest addition to its roster. The 20-year-old will join the team as she broadens her cycling repertoire to include road racing. Valentina is already part of Canyon’s elite off-road division, racing for Canyon CLLCTV MTB in both cyclo-cross and mountain bike, and has shown rapid and impressive development. She is the reigning Italian U23 National Champion in both cross-country MTB and cyclo-cross, and placed fourth in the U23 cross-country event at the 2024 UCI MTB World Championships.

Vittoria Bussi, the first woman to break the 50km barrier in the Hour Record, will come out of retirement to attempt to surpass her own world record. The Italian rider is set to make her attempt on 9 May in Mexico, and in addition to targeting the Hour Record, she will also aim to break the women’s 4km individual pursuit world record, currently held by Great Britain’s Anna Morris. A mathematician by training and a former elite runner, Bussi came to cycling later in life and has focused primarily on time trials and solo efforts on the track.

Full details of the Lloyds Tour of Britain Women, including stage routes, intermediate sprints, and Queen of the Mountains climbs, are now available. The race gets underway on Thursday 5 June, starting from Forestry England’s Dalby Forest in North Yorkshire. Stage one will take riders across 81.5 kilometres of the North York Moors National Park and the Tees Valley, before finishing on the Coast Road beside Zetland Park in Redcar. Stage two stays within the Tees Valley, culminating in a challenging uphill finish at Saltburn-by-the-Sea, after 114.3 kilometres of racing. Stage three starts and finishes in The Square, Kelso, and features a spectator-friendly 143.8-kilometre route. The final stage, on Sunday 8 June, will be a city circuit race in Glasgow, where the next champion will be crowned, succeeding the previous winner, Lotte Kopecky.

After Liège-Bastogne-Liège, where she finished third, Demi Vollering openly shared that her hormones had been working against her. It’s the second time the Tour de France winner has spoken out about this often-overlooked challenge for female athletes. The Dutch rider admitted that she was struggling the whole day of the race. It’s hard to overstate how important this kind of honesty is – especially for young athletes watching from home, who are now hearing about these challenges in elite athletes. This comes at a time when more research than ever is being conducted into how the female body responds to high-level physical performance.

Lotte Kopecky has addressed the pressure she felt during the spring classics campaign, sharing on Instagram that she was impacted by the weight of high expectations and critical media commentary following her results. In her post, Kopecky revealed that she had struggled with knee issues over the winter, which made it difficult to perform at her best. Despite the setbacks, Kopecky said she is now making positive progress and is feeling optimistic as she looks ahead to her upcoming races.

After 360 kilometres of grueling racing at The Traka 360, Sarah Sturm finished third, a result she admitted left her feeling unsatisfied. The American rider spoke candidly about the issues caused by dropped male riders rejoining the front of the women’s race, which she said disrupted the competitive integrity of the event. While it’s traditional in gravel racing for men and women to start together, many elite races have begun implementing separate start times for the women to ensure a fair competition. At Traka 360, however, the 10-minute gap between the men’s and women’s starts proved insufficient. Sturm has called for a more effective start protocol in future events, reinforcing the growing consensus among top riders that women deserve a race unaffected by external factors.

A modern pioneer of women’s cycling, Joane Somarriba enjoyed a stellar career in the late 1990s and early 2000s, claiming victories at some of the sport’s most prestigious events, including the Grand Boucle, the Giro d’Italia Donne, Emakumeen Bira, and the World Championships. Now 52, the Spanish legend serves as an ambassador for Laboral Kutxa–Fundación Euskadi, Spain’s only second-tier UCI ProTeam, and is currently with the team at La Vuelta Femenina by Carrefour.es. Somarriba praised the ongoing professionalisation of women’s cycling, highlighting significant improvements in racing conditions and support for riders. However, she also expressed a desire to see La Vuelta Femenina make greater use of Spain’s iconic mountain passes and more demanding terrain, believing the race still holds untapped potential for growth and prestige.

When Kimberley joined the AG Insurance–Soudal Team in 2024, she made history as the first Mauritian cyclist ever to compete at WorldTour level. Since then, the 29-year-old has been proudly putting her small island nation on the global cycling map. Her journey to the top tier of road racing has been anything but conventional. With a background in mountain biking, Pienaar has claimed African Championship titles, she’s had to fight for every opportunity and prove herself with each race. But her resilience and talent have brought her to the sport’s highest stage, when she won Liège-Bastogne-Liège.

4 – 10 May: Vuelta España Femenina by Carrefour.es

9 May: La Classique Morbihan

10 May: GP du Morbihan