LORENA WIEBES
WIEBES
AT WARP SPEED
In just two years, Lorena Wiebes has rapidly broken through as one of the fastest sprinters in the world. Still only aged 21, the Dutchwoman tells Procycling about joining Team DSM and her Olympic dream
Writer Thomas Olsthoorn /// Portraits Cor Vos
Some riders retire without ever having won a race. Others have to fight their whole career to get the taste of victory just a few times. But there are also riders who seem to have been born to win. After three seasons as a pro, Lorena Wiebes can count herself as one of the latter.
She doesn’t turn 22 until 17 March, but already Wiebes has 23 wins under her belt. She only needed 98 race days to get there, to be precise. In other words: about every one in four days of racing, Wiebes was able to cross the finish line with her hands in the air in first place. That may be described as impressive.
It’s especially impressive for a rider who was still playing football up until age 15. Wiebes had, however, discovered the bike by then, but with mixed results. The real flame was yet to be lit. “I started cycling because of my father, who used to ride in triathlons,” Wiebes tells Procycling. “One day he came home with a BMX and I would ride it every Sunday morning around the course at the local cycling club. At first I really didn’t like cycling on the road. I was done with that for a while, after I had a bad fall during a club race.
“I would get knocked over a lot during football -even as a footballer I was quite quick -and my father encouraged me to try cycling again. This time around I did enjoy it and I had gotten over my fear of falling. I would usually belong in the middle bracket when it came to cyclocross. So I thought: maybe I have more talent on the road than cross. And I was right. I won my first races as a second year junior.”
Wiebes can’t remember how she found out she was good at sprinting. Perhaps the gymnastics classes she took in her younger years had something to do with her explosiveness, she thinks. Either way, she belonged to the ranking of the fastest sprinters of her generation and was scouted by Liv-Plantur, the predecessor of Team Sunweb, as a second year junior.