Lorena Wiebes only turned 26 last week. If you subscribe to the thought that athletes reach their peak at around 28, Wiebes still has two years to age until she reaches her supremacy. That’s a scary thought. For three of the past four seasons, no other rider in the women’s peloton has won more than her in each campaign. Win two more races – and she could feasibly do that before the end of this month – and she’ll have tasted victory in 100 professional races. 

None of them, however, not even four successive Ronde van Drenthe titles or two European Championship victories, have been as meaningful as the one she picked up at a cold, wet and windy Milan-Sanremo. She first stayed with the climbers and then, after a mighty effort from Lotte Kopecky to pull Elisa Longo Borghini back, Wiebes outsprinted the rest. 

A thoroughbred sprinter hasn’t won a men’s Sanremo since Arnaud Démare in 2016, but at 156km in length, it was unknown whether or not the women’s race would prove as equally resistant to the sprinters. Answer: it did not. “This one is really high on my list, it could be the biggest victory of my career,” the Dutchwoman beamed. “I think almost all of the top-10 of the UCI rankings were here and that makes it a really important race to win. 

This article was published on Rouleur during Milan-Sanremo 2025. You can read the full article here.