One thing I would be wary of, is that the insane level of epicness that we got yesterday will probably encourage ASO to give us more "seven stages of jockeying for position before one big mountain stage that answers all the questions" designs, not realising that SD Worx' dysfunctionality gave them lightning in a bottle here, in the same way as the epic final week of the 2010 Giro was necessitated by the L'Aquila stage and you can't bank on a 50-man break including past and future GT winners gaining 13 minutes mid-race every year. However, one thing that we do now have which we didn't previously was a signature stage, an epic showdown, something that legitimises the legacy of the Tour de France Femmes; a battle that feels like part of the history of cycling that can be talked about in years to come, the closest Tour finish, the all-timer defence of the jersey. Something that belongs in the history and adds to the iconography of Alpe d'Huez; Vollering on the tarmac broken, Kasia not knowing if she's won and breaking down, holding her bike above her head, her husband running up the mountain in the last 2km alongside her... it's the most relevant Alpe d'Huez has been since 2008, and arguably the best mountain stage since Stelvio 2020.
And its fallout could be long as well. Have SD Worx just "Contadored" Vollering? I think it's very possible. I know that my readings of the SD Worx situation have largely been sympathetic to Vollering over the last two years, possibly too much, and I've taken some flak for it, but I've read Wiebes and Kopecky as the most selfish riders there, and that Vollering has only really had issues with the team where her and Kopecky's aims and actions have intertwined, such as Kopecky's antics at last year's Tour and Strade Bianche. However, many had fired back that Demi was similarly selfish and unlikable, but you'd expect a fair bit of "you reap what you sow" kind of response to this if that were the case, and you certainly wouldn't have expected her to handle the defeat with the kind of dignity that she has done. A lot of people who have been either indifferent to or even disliked Vollering have viewed her in a sympathetic light as a result of this race and her treatment by the team, and the fact that the response to the team's posts about it have been so universal seems like it's created a groundswell of support for her in the same way as Contador probably never grows to become as popular as he was if it weren't for the Hog's core's deliberate marginalisation and ostracisation of him in the 2009 Tour.
One thing that this does raise as a noteworthy question is the role of Anna van der Breggen in all of this. While SD Worx' top-heaviness has resulted in a lot of conflicts of goals over the years, the disunity has really accelerated in recent years. Anna and Demi worked very well together back in 2021, with a kind of retiring master-understudy relationship. But I don't think it's earth-shattering news to say that a lot of people have viewed Anna's time in the team car as having been disastrous; I don't know if it's that she is unwilling to check any egos and offend anybody, or that tactics on the fly and the strength to respond to moves came so easily and naturally for her that she doesn't offer enough guidance, or what, but the team's tactics have been questionable at best lately. The fact Vollering has been the one to get shafted by most of the worst decisions could be coincidental, but with the coterminous announcement of van der Breggen's return to the bike, it lends it a sinister overtone; with Wiebes reinventing herself for durability and Kopecky's realm extending ever further into the mountains with her win at the UAE Tour and her performance at Blockhaus, the area of the calendar where the team would be solely behind Vollering has already been cut down significantly, but adding van der Breggen to the mix would erode this entirely. Anna VDB has been with the team since 2017 and her coming across from Rabobank was almost a watershed moment that earmarked the end of the transition period through 2015 and 2016 from Rabobank being the dominant force in the sport to Boels-Dolmans/SD Worx taking up that mantle. With the end of Guarnier's peak years, the retirement of Evelyn Stevens, and then a year later Lizzie Deignan taking her first year out for motherhood, it swiftly became van der Breggen's team... it seems inconceivable that she would be coming back if she didn't think she could win things, but it seems like in order for the team to be working for her when she's been off the bike for three years, she needs to not be a secondary option, and in the races where her skillset would allow for her goals not to be subsumed to those of Kopecky or Wiebes, there is a big Demi Vollering-shaped obstacle. Kopecky is under contract for a few years yet. Wiebes - assuming she's on a deal big enough that nobody offers her more money entitling her to walk as per contract stipulations - is under contract for a while too. Vollering's contract was due, and conspiratorially, you could read the actions of the team car in the last 12 months or so as giving her a helping hand out the door.
I mean, Nike care enough about Vollering to decorate the side of a Paris building for her at the Olympics. Specialized care enough about Vollering to want to go with her when she moves team. SD Worx care enough about Vollering to let their riders go to the press and announce that they saw "something yellow on the floor" and that their team leader - in yellow - was no longer with them, but was either so monumentally stupid that she couldn't connect the dots, or so monumentally selfish that she thought coming 8th in a stage - a stage! - was more important to the team than winning the GC of the Tour de France.
Think about that. It was more important not to hurt Lorena's pride by telling her she couldn't sprint for 8th place than to expend a domestique to help limit the losses of the strongest stage racer in women's cycling because they're so used to being totally overpowered that they figured, hey, they can take it. But that's not on Anna van der Breggen. That's on Danny Stam. He's managed this s**t-show for several years and he has a key role here too: this is the man that said that he and his team don't view Niewiadoma as a threat because she'll always overwork herself and burn herself out. And I mean, he's not necessarily wrong, as somebody who's followed Kasia's career for a decade, she does do that, but it's an assumption that could - and did - come back and bite them, because they figured they could afford to abandon Demi to her fate in pursuit of that illustrious 8th place in the sprint behind the front group, because they can just take that time back whenever they want. Again, the team are used to being overpowered and think that they can just brute force their way out of any problem, so they don't need to work as a team. And all too often in recent years other teams have helped them out time and time again, enabling them to continue to hold this attitude. The ascent of Alpe d'Huez was like Danny Stam being hit in the face with a sledgehammer of hubris for his arrogance and disrespectfulness. And by and large, public opinion appears to agree - sympathising with Vollering as the victim of the team's arrogance and dysfunction, and largely laughing in the faces of those responsible.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram