SD Worx-Protime Confirm Roubaix Femmes Squad: Kopecky Leads, Wiebes & Vas Anchor the Dutch Superteam's Cobbled Title Bid
SD Worx-Protime have confirmed their six-rider line-up for Saturday's Paris-Roubaix Femmes, with reigning world champion Lotte Kopecky leading a hand-picked cobbled unit anchored by sprinter Lorena Wiebes and former cyclo-cross world champion Blanka Vas. After a frustrating Tour of Flanders campaign that ended with Kopecky in fourth and Wiebes off the road on the Koppenberg, the most successful women's team of the past five years arrives at the Vélodrome with everything to prove and one of the most balanced rosters in the field.
The line-up confirmed by team management on Wednesday morning is built unmistakably around Kopecky and Wiebes as a co-leader axis, with Vas, Mischa Bredewold, Marlen Reusser's vacant cobbled deputy slot filled by a young Dutch climber, and Christine Majerus and Anniina Ahtosalo providing the legwork. It is a squad designed to play both ends of the race — Kopecky if it splinters in the Trouée d'Arenberg or the Mons-en-Pévèle, Wiebes if it comes back together for a Carrefour de l'Arbre regroup that ends in a dash to the velodrome.
"We are coming to Roubaix with one ambition and that is to win it," sport director Anna van der Breggen said after the announcement. "Lotte and Lorena both have the legs for this race. Lotte has the experience of winning here, Lorena has the speed if it ends in a sprint, and Blanka brings the cyclo-cross instincts on the cobbles that make a real difference when the race is chaotic." Van der Breggen also confirmed that the entire squad completed a final cobbled reconnaissance of the Mons-en-Pévèle, Camphin and Carrefour de l'Arbre sectors on Tuesday — extending the team-wide recon work that began last week as the team builds to its second title bid of the new women's-Roubaix era.
Kopecky's relationship with the Hell of the North is the central narrative of the team's entire week. The Belgian world champion won the inaugural Paris-Roubaix Femmes from a breakaway-sprint in 2024, finished off the podium in 2025 when Pauline Ferrand-Prévot soloed clear, and now arrives in Denain with a fully restructured spring schedule that has placed Roubaix above every other Classic on her calendar after a quiet Flanders. "I am very motivated for Roubaix," she said in the post-Flanders mixed zone. "The cobbles are my life — and the win was simply not in our reach on Sunday. So now everything goes to Saturday."
Wiebes is the wild card. The European sprint queen took her record-extending fourth straight Scheldeprijs Women on the Churchilllaan on Wednesday, and her form has rarely looked sharper. Her cobble-handling, however, remains the question that has hung over her two previous Roubaix appearances — third in 2025 was the flash of brilliance, the early-race crashes in 2023 and 2024 the cautionary tale. SD Worx team management has built the entire support structure around the assumption that if Wiebes survives the first hour she becomes the favourite for any group sprint. Bredewold, in particular, has been tasked with shepherding the European champion through the early sectors.
The notable omission, of course, is Marlen Reusser, the Swiss European time-trial champion who would have been the team's third co-leader had she not fractured a vertebra in the Tour of Flanders crash that also took down Elisa Longo Borghini. Reusser had won Dwars door Vlaanderen Women just four days before her crash and was riding the form of her career; her absence reshapes the entire favourites picture and is the single biggest reason the SD Worx hierarchy still feels exposed even with Kopecky and Wiebes both fit. "We miss Marlen enormously," Van der Breggen acknowledged. "But this is what the team is for. Everyone steps up."
SD Worx face a particular threat from defending champion Pauline Ferrand-Prévot and Visma-Lease a Bike, who are expected to confirm their squad on Thursday with the Frenchwoman the headline name. The cyclo-cross queen Puck Pieterse at Fenix-Deceuninck is the third leg of the favourites' triangle after her stunning Flanders Femmes podium, with Movistar's reshuffled line-up around Liane Lippert and Cat Ferguson the dark horse of a startlist that looks every bit as deep as the men's race the next day.
For Kopecky, the road to Saturday now ends with three days of activation, recovery and one final bunch ride on Friday in Denain. The Belgian's double bid to add another Monument to her Milan-San Remo Donne crown is the highest-stakes day of her 2026 spring. With a confirmed squad behind her, a defending champion's instincts, and the strongest sprinter in the world tucked in her wheel for the velodrome finale, SD Worx-Protime arrive in northern France with the team-bus mood of a side that needed bad news at Flanders to remember exactly how good they actually are.