Lidl-Trek Confirm Roubaix Femmes Squad: Van Anrooij Leads Without Longo Borghini as Team Pivots Fully to Ardennes
Lidl-Trek have confirmed a six-rider line-up for Saturday's Paris-Roubaix Femmes headlined by Dutch cyclo-cross star Shirin van Anrooij, with defending champion Elisa Longo Borghini officially ruled out as the American-backed squad pivots its entire Classics campaign to the Amstel Gold Race and the Ardennes week that follows.
Van Anrooij, 24, leads a squad that also includes Lucinda Brand, Amanda Spratt, Ellen van Dijk, Shirin's younger sister Saar van Anrooij and Italian rouleuse Elisa Balsamo. It is the youngest and arguably the most aggressive six Lidl-Trek have ever entered at the Hell of the North — the average age of the line-up is just 26 — and it has been assembled for a single purpose: get Van Anrooij to the front group on the run-in to Wallers and let her cyclo-cross instincts take over.
The absence of Longo Borghini will dominate the conversation on the way into Denain. The 34-year-old Italian has been the defining figure of women's Roubaix since the event was revived in 2021, winning in 2022 and placing on the podium every year the race has been held, and she had explicitly targeted a second title this spring. But the crash-concussion she suffered at the Tour of Flanders ten days ago — and the chest infection that had weakened her in the days before it — have convinced Lidl-Trek's medical staff that a cobbled Monument on three days' notice from hospital discharge is not a responsible option. "Elisa's recovery has been excellent," team manager Ina Teutenberg confirmed on Wednesday, "but Roubaix-Paris on Saturday is simply too soon. The priority is now a clean run at Amstel Gold and we are building the rest of the spring around that."
Van Anrooij stepping into the captaincy is far from a token promotion. The former junior and U23 cyclo-cross world champion has been arguably the peloton's best-kept secret on the women's cobbles for the past three seasons — fifth at Roubaix 2024, seventh at Flanders 2025, and a breakthrough podium at this year's Gent-Wevelgem where she out-climbed Kopecky on the Kemmelberg before being caught inside the final kilometre. Her handling on rough surfaces, forged in twenty winters of mud, is the asset that makes her an ideal foil for a dry, fast Roubaix where tyres are expected to stay up and the finale is decided by positioning into Wallers.
Brand, another ex-CX world champion, will be the most experienced cobble-hardened rider on the squad and the likely foil in the finale if the race comes back together into a reduced group. Ellen van Dijk — at 39 the most decorated rouleuse in the women's peloton — will be the team's road captain, shouldering the job of positioning Lidl-Trek into the first sectors after Avesnes-le-Sec. Spratt and Balsamo round out the squad with a mix of endurance and sprint speed, while 22-year-old Saar van Anrooij's inclusion alongside her older sister is a moment that Teutenberg has openly called "one of the favourite lines I have ever been able to write on a Roubaix team sheet".
Lidl-Trek's tactical plan, insiders confirmed, will be to race unusually actively from the very first sector. Without Longo Borghini to lead a waiting game, the team intends to attack the race from Haveluy onwards, forcing SD Worx-Protime and Lotte Kopecky to expend energy policing moves that would previously have been allowed to go. "If you had told me on Sunday that Elisa would not start, I would have said we had a five per cent chance of winning," Teutenberg said. "Today I think it is closer to fifteen. Shirin is in the best form of her career and the race is faster and drier than the one Elisa won in 2022. The opportunity is real — we just have to race for it, not wait for it."
For Longo Borghini, the pivot carries its own pain but also a silver lining. A full recovery window before Amstel Gold Race on 19 April now gives her eleven clear days, and with Wednesday's Brabantse Pijl return already confirmed to assess race fitness, the 2022 Ardennes double could yet become the Italian's 2026 headline rather than the Hell of the North. "I am disappointed but I understand," Longo Borghini said in a short statement released by the team. "Ardennes has always been where my season really starts. This year it will be where I fight to finish it the way I wanted to."
On Saturday afternoon in Denain, Lidl-Trek will line up without the only rider who has ever won their race. But they will also line up with a Dutch cyclo-cross star in the form of her life, a tactical mandate to attack from the gun, and — for the first time in seasons — nothing to lose.