Lorena Wiebes Secures Second Tour de France Femmes Win Amidst UCI Lawsuit Threat

The Dutch sprinter Lorena Wiebes took her second win in this year’s Tour de France Femmes in Geneva, further extending her overall lead in the nine-day race. Wiebes is proving untouchable in the sprint finishes and her turn of speed in the final 250 metres, on the lakeside finish of the Quai du Mont-Blanc, reduced her rivals to onlookers.

Lone breakaway Riejanne Markus had led by more than half a minute on the flat approach to Geneva and maintained that advantage into the final 5km, even with the whole peloton giving chase. But as the kilometres clicked down, the peloton clawed its way back, eclipsing Markus in the last 500 metres, before Wiebes made her inevitable surge to take yet another sprint win.

“The girls were chasing full gas to bring back Riejanne,” Wiebes said of her teammates. “It’s even more beautiful to finish it off in yellow.” She now leads the Tour overall by 14 seconds from Kim Le Court and by 16 seconds from the 2023 winner, Demi Vollering.

Despite her success in the Femmes, Wiebes remains set to sue the UCI over her disqualification from the women’s Giro in May when, after she won the opening stage, her bike was ruled underweight and she was stripped of the race leader’s pink jersey.

There is no indication that either Wiebes or her SD Worx Protime team intend to back down from their threat of legal action over what they consider to be a flawed weighing process, conducted in a gusting wind.

After her stage win in Lausanne on the opening day, Wiebes’ team manager, Erwin Janssen, made sure there was no repeat of the Giro debacle.

“I wanted to see how it all worked, how they actually did it,” he told the media at the start of stage two in Aigle. “I took some videos of the process. There was a four-person jury, and the whole setup was fairly enclosed. It took place in a tent, so there was no wind, and the installation looked solid. One of the four was someone who had handled the weigh-ins at the Giro. I think even he was feeling a bit nervous.”

Wiebes’ bike, Janssen said, came in within the rules at “a solid seven kilos”. “I could really sense a certain tension among the jury. I got the impression they were thinking, ‘I hope everything goes smoothly.’ Everything was recorded, and then you get a brief report,” he said. “If you agree with it, you have to sign it.”

But Janssen said that neither he nor any of his staff had signed paperwork at the Giro. “Our lawyers are currently exchanging questions with the other side, including questions about the procedure. We’ve received answers, but they’re too vague. There will be further developments on that front in the coming months.”

Janssen insisted that Wiebes was “unfairly expelled from the Giro” and that the Tour de France leader suffered both financial and reputational losses. “The stakes are incredibly high. Lorena could have secured three, perhaps even four, [stage] victories there. We are looking into whether we can be compensated for this. We have sponsorship contracts stipulating financial bonuses for achieving specific results – bonuses we missed out on because of this incident.”

Janssen insisted that the issue will be resolved, but through “a court case or arbitration” and added that “we expect that to happen”.

The UCI president, David Lappartient, however, was defiant when he was asked if the sport’s governing body was prepared for a suit from Wiebes and her team. “We have very good relationships with the teams,” he said, “but you can’t be friends with everybody, otherwise we’d never decide anything.

“Sometimes we take decisions that are not 100% supported, but that’s the reality about anything in the world. We have some tensions with some teams, but even if we have tensions, we keep the dialogue. It’s not a personal conflict.”

Wiebes is thought unlikely to make it a hat-trick of wins on the hilly third stage on Monday, through the Jura to Poligny, even if her improved climbing still makes her an outside bet. The first-category climb of the Col de la Faucille, however, after just 24km of the stage, followed by three more categorised climbs, may well make a third success beyond her.

The defending champion, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, has so far been a discreet presence. Currently in ninth place overall, the Olympic gold medallist is awaiting Tuesday’s individual time trial and the bigger climbs of the final weekend. “As soon as we knew there was a time trial, we made sure to put me in a better position on the time-trial bike, and do quite a few aerodynamic tests on the track,” Ferrand-Prévot said. “I’ve spent a lot of time on the time-trial bike these last months. So I will try to give my best and to limit the damage on the fourth stage.”