On the surface, stage 2 of the Tour de Romandie Féminin was a great day for SD Worx-Protime: They took a 1-2 as Demi Vollering won the stage ahead of Lotte Kopecky who is the new overall leader going into Sunday’s final stage. However, the task of managing the two stars’ race programs and characters is becoming harder and harder with only months left until Vollering leaves the team.
“I don’t know. It’s a strange situation because I will leave the team, so I hope my team will be neutral on this. We will see tomorrow,” Vollering said when asked about the plans for stage 3. She then asked the interviewer for confirmation that Kopecky was ahead of her in GC before continuing: “Probably they will go for her.”
In such a situation, riders usually use the pronoun “we” to refer to the team. It is possible, even likely, that Vollering was referring to the sport directors, Danny Stam and Anna van der Breggen, who make the decisions on team tactics, but the poignant phrasing nevertheless raised eyebrows.
When other teams get a 1-2, their riders will often cross the finish line celebrating together, but Vollering and Kopecky sprinted against each other for the victory – and not for the first time. In the 2023 Strade Bianche, they fought for victory amongst themselves on the last 400 metres in the narrow streets of Siena after catching and dropping Kristen Faulkner. Then as now, Vollering won the sprint.
Vollering’s departure at the end of 2024 was announced during the spring season, and in the stage races that followed, the team was criticised for not supporting their GC leader as well as they could have, both in the Vuelta Femenina (which Vollering won) and the Tour de France Femmes (which Vollering lost by four seconds after losing time after a stage 5 crash).
“Our plan was to draw the other teams out and let them try to drop us. They tried to do that, but they didn't manage to drop us. In the end, five riders remained, three of them from our team. Niamh Fisher-Black was the first to attack, she tried again, then Realini took the initiative. Demi countered that attack, then Lotte fought her way back. In the end, Lotte and Demi were the only ones left,” Stam explained the plan the team had laid before the stage.
The Tour de Romandie Féminin is one of the races where the UCI is testing how races do if teams are not allowed to use radio communication between the riders and the sport directors. This meant that no decision could be made in the team car on who should win the stage.
As Vollering remarked, two riders from the same team sprinting against each other will bring the fairest outcome, but combined with past incidents, it does paint a picture of a soon-to-end relationship that may not be adversarial as such but isn’t that amicable anymore either.
