Paris-Roubaix Femmes 2026 — SD Worx-Protime Complete The Minor Podium: Lotte Kopecky Second At 2:41, Lorena Wiebes Third From The Chase, And Elisa Longo Borghini Fourth After A Six-Week Spring Arc That Ends On The Roubaix Velodrome Concrete
The headline of the 2026 Paris-Roubaix Femmes belonged, for the second consecutive year, to Pauline Ferrand-Prévot and her 119-kilometre solo from the Tilloy sector — a ride that the French broadcaster Canal+ has already described as the single greatest individual performance in the history of the women's race. But the story of the minor podium, decided 2:41 later on the Roubaix velodrome concrete, was no less remarkable, and it belonged entirely to SD Worx-Protime.
Lotte Kopecky crossed the velodrome line alone in second place at 2 minutes 41 seconds, a finishing margin that understates by a considerable distance the isolation she had endured through the closing 60 kilometres of the race. The Belgian had been the last rider to let Ferrand-Prévot's wheel go, dropping off the Visma-Lease a Bike rider's back wheel in the ninety seconds that followed the Mons-en-Pévèle sector, and she had then ridden every one of the final 48 kilometres out of the chase group entirely on her own — a tactical decision the SD Worx-Protime team car had radioed through at kilometre 98 of the race and which Kopecky had executed without once looking backwards.
The reason for the solo chase, as SD Worx-Protime DS Lars Boom explained to the Belgian broadcast pool in the velodrome infield at 17:52, was mathematical: "We calculated the moment Pauline's gap went over two minutes that we could not close her with a fifteen-rider group working together. We had to put Lotte on the road alone, with her own effort and her own pacing, and to save Lorena for the velodrome. That was the only scenario in which we could take second and third on the same afternoon." The calculation was correct to within a single place.
Behind Kopecky, the chase group that finally entered the velodrome had been pared down to fifteen riders by a sequence of late selections through Carrefour de l'Arbre, Gruson and the final 500 metres of Roubaix city cobbles. Lorena Wiebes, the fastest finisher on the start sheet by a comfortable margin, had ridden every one of the final two hours as the sole SD Worx-Protime protected rider in the group — her mandate from Boom was simply not to go to the front, not to chase, and not to expose herself until the velodrome banking. She obeyed to the letter. When the fifteen riders swung onto the velodrome concrete for the final 500 metres, Wiebes found the wheel of Elisa Longo Borghini — the Italian's first Paris-Roubaix start since her hospital discharge six weeks ago — and used the UAE Team ADQ leader as a launch pad through turn two.
The two-up sprint between Wiebes and Longo Borghini, finally decided by a bike throw at 40.2 km/h over the last five metres of the velodrome concrete, was the closest the podium has been at Paris-Roubaix Femmes since the women's race was granted full Monument status in 2024. Wiebes took third by a width of tyre. Longo Borghini, her emotional return from concussion ending on the podium apron rather than on it, collapsed onto the infield grass for a full forty seconds before accepting a hand from the velodrome marshals. "Yes, four is not three," the Italian would later say in her flash-zone interview. "But six weeks ago I could not walk down a hospital corridor without vomiting. Four is enough for today."
Behind the SD Worx-Protime podium sweep, Puck Pieterse took fifth for Fenix-Deceuninck, her second consecutive top-five at the Hell of the North and a ride that will close any remaining doubt over the Dutch star's cobbled credentials. Cat Ferguson, on her second Paris-Roubaix Femmes for Movistar, held on for a stunning sixth at just nineteen years old and became, by a distance of more than a year, the youngest rider ever to finish inside the top ten at a senior women's Monument. Marlen Reusser, still recovering from the vertebra fracture she sustained at Flanders Femmes six days ago, did not start.
For SD Worx-Protime, the second-third combination behind Ferrand-Prévot is the team's eleventh podium across the five Women's Monuments of 2026, and it confirms what the numbers from Milan-San Remo, Flanders Femmes and now Roubaix Femmes have been telling the paddock all spring: that no other women's team can currently match the Dutch superteam's ability to convert a race into two or three podium places at the same afternoon. The team's only remaining 2026 Monument goal — a second Ferrand-Prévot shaped wrinkle in the season — is Liège-Bastogne-Liège Femmes in two weeks. Kopecky confirmed in the velodrome mixed zone that she will start. Wiebes confirmed that she will not.
The 2026 Paris-Roubaix Femmes podium, in full: 1. Pauline Ferrand-Prévot (Visma-Lease a Bike) in 4h 02' 33"; 2. Lotte Kopecky (SD Worx-Protime) at 2' 41"; 3. Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx-Protime) at 3' 38"; 4. Elisa Longo Borghini (UAE Team ADQ) same time as third; 5. Puck Pieterse (Fenix-Deceuninck) same time. The race rolls on to the Ardennes on Wednesday, with the Brabantse Pijl women's event already confirmed as Kopecky's next start.