With Scheldeprijs victory Lorena Wiebes has amassed 40 career wins

With Scheldeprijs victory Lorena Wiebes has amassed 40 career wins

Lorena Wiebes has only just turned 23 but the Team DSM rider already has 40 career wins to her name after winning Scheldeprijs on Wednesday. The Dutch rider also won the inaugural edition of the race last year and hinted that she would be back again in 2023 to try for a third victory in Schoten.

Arguably the women’s peloton’s fastest sprinter, Wiebes has already claimed four wins this season including the Women’s WorldTour Ronde van Drenthe where she out-sprinted the likes of Elisa Balsamo, Lotte Kopecky, Emma Norsgaard, and Marta Bastianelli.

Wiebes had a slow start to the season at the Setmana Ciclista Valenciana, however, since then, the only rider to have beaten Wiebes in a sprint so far this year is Elisa Balsamo at Brugge-De Panne — at which Wiebes found herself sprinting with a broken spoke after a late-race crash took out her key lead out rider Charlotte Kool.

Tadej Pogačar, who is the same age as Wiebes, has so far racked up 37 career wins (albeit including two Tour de France titles) while Marianne Vos, who at the age of 34 has over 200 career wins — including 30 Giro Rosa stages and multiple Classics — had already amassed 76 victories by the age of 22.

Of course, although Vos is an undisputed champion, the landscape of women’s cycling is vastly different now, with Wiebes facing much more competition than a 22-year-old Vos would have.

Last year, 22-year-old Danish sprinter Emma Norsgaard was positioned as Wiebes’ main rival in the peloton. This season, her main competition has come from world champion Balsamo but new sprinting talent has also emerged in the form of 22-year-old Chiara Consonni of Valcar-Travel & Service who won Dwars door Vlaanderen last week.

When she isn’t racing for a sprint, Wiebes is often seen working for her teammates, most recently in Sunday’s Tour of Flanders where she was seen at the front of the peloton working for DSM’s leader of the day Floortje Mackaij.

Wiebes’ next race will be Paris-Roubaix Femmes on April 16th. She is also provisionally down to race the Tour de France Femmes in July where there are likely to be a few opportunities for her to increase her tally, including the first stage on the Champs Elysees.