Fenix-Deceuninck has announced 3 new riders this morning, two of which were known unofficially due to being registered on the team via the UCI – Petra Stiasny and Carina Schrempf. Both of these riders made it in the 2023 Fenix-Deceuninck team line-up preview as a result. Maria Martins joins from the former Le Col Wahoo team, they announced their new sponsorship as Lifeplus Wahoo this morning. Martins has so far balanced her road career with her track career where she took a bronze medal in the World Championships at the omnium in 2022. She was also Portuguese national champion on the road in 2021 and we got used to seeing her take strong sprinting results in the early part of 2022 in the national jersey.
Petra Stiasny joins from Roland Cogeas and looks like she will be a strong pure climber. She delivered a strong climb at the Tour de Romandie in 2022 finishing 5th on the queen stage. Where she fits into a mainly Belgian calendar will be interesting, I assume she will be used mainly at the foreign WWT stage races like the Giro Donne and maybe the Tour de France Femmes.
Carina Schrempf made people take notice with her 2022 cycling season She’s a former runner who was a 4x outdoor and 6x indoor national champion runner for Austria. She was 8th in GC at Gracia Orlová and finished 33rd at the World Championships in Wollongong in her first season at this level. The Austrian is a proper wildcard going into 2023.
2023 will be the Fenix-Deceuninck team’s first season in the Women’s WorldTour. They finished the 2022 season strongly to earn enough points to qualify for the final 15th position in the WWT. They can’t rest on their laurels however as they need a similar season points-wise to remain in the Women’s WorldTour in 2024.
