After stage 1 of the Vuelta a Burgos Feminas was won by Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx-Protime), stage 2 looked likely to finish in a bunch sprint again. And although Wiebes did sprint to victory in the end, the final run to the line in Bodega Viña Pedrosa was an exciting one.
SD Worx were preparing to ready their sprint train for Wiebes while other teams livened up the final 24km on the rolling finishing circuit with attacks flying left and right, most of them initiated by Fenix-Premier Tech.
"It was our intention to make it a really hard final. There was no wind and no climbs, so we didn't want to just wait for a sprint with Lorena, that's true," Fenix-Premier Tech directeur sportif Valerie Demey told Cyclingnews.
"From the intermediate sprint onwards, the plan was for Sara [Casasola], Aniek [van Alphen] and Xaydée [Van Sinaey] to attack one by one and try to create chaos in the race."
Demey ended her own career as a rider after the 2025 season, exchanging her bike for the steering wheel of the team car. She had always been an attacking rider, and that style clearly carries through into her tactics as a DS.
Van Alphen attacked on the uphill finishing straight with one lap of 19km to go, and her move led to a group of 15 riders including household names like Maëva Squiban (UAE Team ADQ), Sara Martín (Movistar), Emma Norsgaard (Lidl-Trek), and Amber Kraak (FDJ United-SUEZ).
However, SD Worx-Protime were also represented with Mikayla Harvey and Mischa Bredewold.
The group never got going, and instead Martín jumped again to go solo. Casasola went after the Spanish champion and bridged to Martín before a group of 11 riders with Kraak, Cédrine Kerbaol (EF Education-Oatly), Mie Bjørndal Ottestad (Uno-X Mobility), and Alison Jackson (St Michel-Preference Home-Auber 93), and also Harvey came up from behind.
Again, the cooperation was lost, and the race came back together before Van Sinaey made her move 11.5km from the finish.
She was followed by Ottestad and Kraak, as well as Silke Smulders (Liv-AlUla-Jayco), Shirin van Anrooij (Lidl-Trek), Federica Venturelli (UAE Team ADQ), and Zoe Bäckstedt (Canyon-SRAM Zondacrypto). SD Worx-Protime, however, had Blanka Vas in the group that grew to 13 riders.
"Staying away with a group was one option, but creating confusion for a late attack was also part of the plan," explained Demey.
"Unfortunately, the speed in the final was simply too high because of the organised chase from several teams, so it still came down to a sprint."
The presence of SD Worx-Protime riders in all the attacking moves, often even a very good sprinter in Vas or Bredewold, made it harder for the groups to settle into any cooperation, and this last front group was reeled in with 8.5km to go.
After that, SD Worx-Protime kept the pace high and were eventually joined by Lidl-Trek, FDJ United-Suez, and UAE Team ADQ who all wanted to get into position for the sprint – a sprint that Wiebes won by several bikelengths.
After all of Fenix-Premier Tech's attacking, the Belgian team came away with an eighth place, courtesy of Millie Couzens. They can't say they didn't try, though.
