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Women's Racing

Movistar Confirm Paris-Roubaix Femmes Squad: Lippert and Cat Ferguson Lead Reshuffled Spanish Line-up Without Reusser

CYCLING LOOKOUT • 8 APRIL 2026

Movistar Team have confirmed their six-rider line-up for Saturday's Paris-Roubaix Femmes, with German champion Liane Lippert leading and 18-year-old British prodigy Cat Ferguson returning for her sophomore Hell of the North. The selection comes after the team confirmed earlier this week that Marlen Reusser will miss the entire Ardennes campaign with a fractured vertebra suffered in Sunday's crash-hit Tour of Flanders Femmes.

The loss of Reusser is a brutal blow to a Movistar squad that arrived at the cobbled Classics with the most dangerous trio in the women's peloton. The Swiss star had won Dwars door Vlaanderen just four days before her crash on the Gentbergstraat, and her absence reshapes the entire balance of Saturday's Monument. With the European time-trial champion sidelined, Movistar's hopes now rest on Lippert's instinctive aggression and Ferguson's rapidly maturing handling skills.

Lippert arrives in northern France in the form of her career. The German finished a career-best third at the Tour of Flanders Femmes on Sunday after surviving the carnage on the Koppenberg, and team management have made clear that she carries undisputed leadership into Saturday. "Liane has been our most consistent rider through the entire spring," sports director Sebastian Henao told domestiquecycling on Wednesday. "Without Marlen we have to adapt our tactics, but we still believe we can fight for the podium."

The headline name for many neutrals, however, will be the teenage Ferguson. The Yorkshire-born junior world champion turns 19 later this month and is competing in only her second professional spring, but her fearless riding through the Belgian opening weekend and a creditable top-twenty finish at her debut Tour of Flanders in 2025 have already marked her out as the brightest British women's road talent in a generation. Movistar believe her cyclo-cross-honed bike handling could make her one of the most dangerous outsiders on the toughest Paris-Roubaix Femmes route ever.

"It feels like a completely different sport," Ferguson said of the cobbles after her 2025 Roubaix debut, and the rapid progression of her sophomore season suggests she has come to terms with that reality. The British teenager has been part of a full Movistar reconnaissance of the new 2026 route over the past week, focusing on the Mons-en-Pévèle, Camphin-en-Pévèle and Carrefour de l'Arbre sectors that will once again decide the race.

The remaining four selections round out a balanced team of strong rouleurs and experienced climbers. Movistar's confirmed line-up for Saturday will need to control the chaos of the early sectors, conserve Lippert and Ferguson for the brutal final 70 kilometres, and exploit the equipment advantages built up through their long winter cobbles development programme. With Demi Vollering absent and defending champion Elisa Longo Borghini also out after her own Flanders concussion, the field is more open than at any point in recent years.

For Movistar, who had been quietly building one of the strongest classics units in the women's peloton around the Lippert-Reusser-Ferguson axis, the Reusser injury threatens to derail an entire spring's worth of carefully laid plans. But team manager Sebastián Unzué has insisted that the project remains on track. "We came into this spring believing we could win a Monument, and that belief has not changed," Unzué told reporters in Roubaix. "Marlen's injury is heartbreaking, but we have other riders who are ready to step up. Liane and Cat are the future of this team — and on Saturday, we will see them race like it."

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