Women’s Scheldeprijs History
There have only been 3 editions of a women’s Scheldeprijs as it was first held coming out of the Covid pandemic. Lorena Wiebes won the first edition in 2021 and then doubled and trebled up in 2022 and 2023. Those results confirm that the women’s Scheldeprijs is very much like the men’s race. Over the years, the men’s edition has been called a sprinter’s world championships or a teaser before the Champs Elysees at least. The women’s Scheldeprijs is very much confirming that norm so far. It remains a 1.1 race, so it’s not absolutely top-drawer in the women’s calendar but certainly gives the pure sprinters a chance to shine.
Held between Schoten, near Antwerp there are no hills of note on the parcours, so it’s really just a flat smash. Like Classic Brugge-De Panne the potential is there for it to get get affected by wind conditions. Most of the damage though is to be done in the first half of the race as the route comes back to a local loop in Schoten where it’s probably too built up to really split up the race into echelons. This year’s forecast is damp and possibly actually raining along with a decent win of around 10mph.
Previous Winners
2023
Lorena Wiebes
2022
Lorena Wiebes
2021
Lorena Wiebes
Women’s Scheldeprijs 2024 Profile
TV Coverage
Wednesday 3rd April 2024
Live on Eurosport/Discovery+ across Europe
Flobikes in USA & Canada
Pickx will also be showing the race online
12:15-14:00
All times in BST
Twitter:#SP24 or #SPwomen
Startlist: FirstCycling
Women’s Scheldeprijs 2024 Contenders
Lorena Wiebes is the big, obvious favourite here. She’s a 3-time and so far the only winner of the women’s Scheldeprijs since it began. Such a flat race will no doubt end in a sprint once again and SD Worx has brought the full leadout here. For once it’s a clear path to leadership with Wiebes counting on 5 riders fully supporting her to the finish. So far in 2024, she hasn’t been beaten in a sprint with her pair of 2nd places coming behind solo winners.
Team dsm-firmenich PostNL’s Charlotte Kool will want to try and even up that score but she’s looked slightly behind where she was in 2023 so far this year. The early season illness has left her playing catch-up to her rivals. At her best, she could challenge and beat Wiebes but there’s no evidence that it is likely to happen at Scheldeprijs unfortunately for her. Rachele Barbieri has been 3rd and 4th at the women’s Scheldeprijs in the last 2 seasons but will be all in to deliver Kool to the line this year.
The 3rd big-name sprinter here is Chiara Consonni who is on the cusp of joining the top tier but hasn’t quite been able to take regular wins when the likes of Wiebes, Kool and Balsamo haven’t been at races. She seems to get her best results riding home in the wind of the likes of Wiebes and has been 2nd and 3rd here in previous years. A podium should beckon here again with Elisa Balsamo not riding and a noticeable drop-off in sprint quality behind the Italian.
Marthe Truyen is the best of the rest on paper and is coming off a good 4th place at Ronde de Mouscron this week. She has other top 10s this year at Drentse Acht van Westerveld and Nokere Koerse too. With the likes of Schweinberger, De Wilde and Pieterse not racing here, Tuyen should be the obvious leader for Fenix-Deceuninck.
Ceratizit-WNT’s Martina Fidanza was 3rd at Ronde de Mouscron in her attempt to reclaim the race she won in 2023. It’s her best result of the 2024 season so far, beating the 5th place she took in the sprint on Stage 2 of the UAE Tour Women. The Italian should be in the mix here and will have a good lead-out in Mylene de Zoete and Sandra Alonso. The latter can also sprint but won a stage of the Tour de Normandie recently by attacking late on. There will be limited opportunities to repeat that in Schoten.
Lidl-Trek looks set to use Elynor Backstedt here as their sprinter, with the Brit getting rare opportunities for her own results. Teammate Ilaria Sanguineti got a slightly disappointing 16th place at Mouscron after losing her lead-out and Backstedt has a chance to improve on that at Scheldeprijs.
In fact, scratch all that! Elisa Balsamo has turned up on a later version of the women’s Scheldeprijs startlist. She will definitely take over the lead sprinter duties, unfortunately relegating Backstedt. Balsamo came within a whisker of beating Wiebes at Gent Wevelgem and looks to be the closest rider to her at the moment. With Balsamo joining the ranks, she will be a big contender and give Wiebes a tight battle.
It’s hard to pick out who will get the nod for Visma Lease a Bike here. Lieke Nooijen and Linda Riedmann have been in and around the lower end of the top-10 of big races like Gent Wevelgem and Brugge-De Panne. Neither is an out-and-out sprinter but in this field certainly have a chance to finish higher than they have so far in 2024. Nienke Veenhoven is also worth noting on a flat course after winning the Tour Down Under crit but hasn’t done much in races results-wise since then. We may also see Maud Oudeman up there as well but she tends to do better on hillier courses than this one. We might see quite a few of the yellow jerseys finishing between 10-25th.
Katrijn de Clercq is going well at the moment for Lotto Dstny Ladies. She was 6th at Ronde de Mouscron, almost keeping tabs with the podium finishers but just falling back slightly on the rise to the line. She also did well at Classic Brugge-De Panne by finishing 11th in the Women’s WorldTour race. She looks like the fastest rider on the startlist for the team so should get a clear path for a result.
Camilla Rånes Bye and Eline van Rooijen will be flying the flag for Coop-Repsol with both having a good race in Mouscron as well. For Bye, the 9th place there was her first UCI top-10 result coming off the back of making moves at Dwars Door Vlaanderen and the Tour of Flanders recently too. Van Rooijen delivered her to that result and held on for 15th this week, it feels like she’s getting closer to the strong set of results she got in similar races last season.
This flat race should be one for Babette van der Wolf of Lifeplus-Wahoo who finished 6th at Drentse Acht. She’s struggled a little bit since then, but that’s somewhat to be expected with the likes of Drenthe, Wevelgem and Flanders. This race represents a good chance to get a result. She’s supported by Kaja Rysz who has her best results of the year so far at the flatters races too. The women’s Scheldeprijs is a chance for one or both to sneak into the top-10.
VolkerWessels will be looking at one of Femke Beuling and Anneke Dijkstra here. The latter took an impressive 5th place at Le Samyn des Dames but has struggled to match that result since. She has the potential to come close to that result again but it might also be a race they focus on Beuling. She’s a sprinter who has a host of good results at the national level but hasn’t necessarily translated that to the UCI level yet. She was 12th in Mouscron though which is a good step towards a good result at Scheldeprijs.
Again the late startlist has added a rider who supercedes what was written before! In this case, it’s the inclusion of Sofie van Rooijen for VolkerWessels. She is much more likely to be a threat here after winning Drentse Acht van Westerveld and following that up with 4th at Nokere Koerse and Volta NXT Classic. She was caught out of position in the final corner of Classic Brugge-De Panne and left herself too much to do there but will hopefully have learnt from that.
Women's Scheldeprijs 2024 Outsiders
Noa Jansen had a strong result at Ronde De Mouscron with the Liv AlUla Jayci Continental rider getting her best result of the season with 8th. It’s her best UCI result since finishing 5th in the GP Mazda Schelkens, another fairly flat sprinters race. There’s definitely a chance for another top-10 result here.
Estonia’s Laura Lizette Sander is also in with a top-10 shout. She finished 8th back at Drentse Acht van Westerveld and took her best result since then with 14th at Ronde de Mouscron. She’ll be racing with AG Insurance-NXTG U23 and should get some good support from the likes of Mirre Knaven and Febe Jooris.
GT Krush RebelLease’s Silje Bader impressed with 4th at Drentse Acht van Westerveld but hasn’t finished either the Ronde van Drenthe or Volta NXT Classic since then. Only 18th years old, Bader has the potential to do well on a flat course again here and will be looking to prove that her great result wasn’t a one-off.
Top 3 Prediction
- Lorena Wiebes
- Elisa Balsamo
- Chiara Consonni
