Emma Norsgaard completes self-reinvention with Tour de France Femmes stage win

A year ago, Emma Norsgaard (Movistar Team) crashed out of the Tour de France Femmes on stage 5. She then worked hard through the off-season to turn herself from a sprinter with an excellent time trial into a classics rider. Her 2023 season started promising until she fractured her collarbone in the Strade Bianche, cutting short the classics campaign she had set her sights on.

At the 2023 Tour de France Femmes, she finally completed her turnaround by going into the breakaway, pushing on with her two companions Agnieszka Skalniak-Sójka (Canyon-SRAM) and Sandra Alonso (Ceratizit-WNT) when the chasing peloton crept ever closer in the final of the race and continuing on with Skalniak-Sójka when Alonso could no longer keep up on the last five kilometres before sprinting out of the Polish rider’s wheel with a whopping 600 metres to go, holding off the surging sprinters by only one second.

At the stage sign-in, Norsgaard had said in several interviews that the team tactics involved her going into the breakaway with the goal of winning the stage, but at that point she did not contemplate actually pulling off such a coup.

“I truly meant it when I said I was going into the breakaway, but I was not expecting this. It's not every day that I just say, today I want to win, and then it happens. It is kind of amazing when the plan just is a success. To win a stage one year after crashing out of the Tour … I’m just truly, truly happy and I cannot thank the team enough for believing in me and really giving me the support,” the 24-year-old Dane said at the winner’s press conference.

Her sports directors Jorge Sanz and Jurgen Roelandts had come up with the plan to win the stage overnight, and Norsgaard was anything but amused when it was presented to her on the morning of the stage after a tropical night in Southern France when the team hotel’s air-condition broke down.

“I woke up this morning thinking, ‘oh no, another day, another day I have to work, another day I have to suffer’. And I was in such a bad mood. I needed three cups of coffee before anyone could speak to me. And then my DS came up with this plan that I needed to go in the breakaway, and I was like, ‘are you kidding me?’ Before the stage I was like, ‘come on, man’, but I love him now,” said Norsgaard.

Although defending Annemiek van Vleuten’s 2022 Tour de France Femmes victory is the undisputed main goal for the Movistar Team, it is not the be-all and end-all. This was proven when Liane Lippert got carte blanche in the uphill sprint on stage 2, resulting in a stage win for the German champion. And just one day before the queen stage with the Col d’Aspin and Col du Tourmalet, Norsgaard was sent on her impossible-sounding breakaway mission.

“When Liane won, I was so emotional, I was even crying when she won. Starting with a win on the second stage was great for the team atmosphere. And we are such a nice team here, real friends and enjoying the time together. That makes miracles happen,” Norsgaard described the Movistar Team spirit.

It isn’t every day that a break of just three riders manages to beat the sprinters, but Norsgaard, Skalniak-Sójka, and Alonso were a trio that had found the winning recipe.

“It was a super strong break, and the girls were pulling so hard. In the last 10 kilometres, I really tried to encourage them, and I think they heard the same in the radio as I did. I'm lost for words; I don't know what to say. I only started believing in it on the last five kilometres, maybe. But otherwise, I was just pulling like there was no tomorrow. I had no idea what was going on behind me and didn’t listen to anything on the radio other than ‘vamos’,” Norsgaard said that the breakaway perfectly embodied the all-or-nothing attitude necessary for breakaway success.

Like the Danish sprinter-turned-stage-hunter, the Movistar Team will have to reinvent itself for 2024 as the team’s superstar rider Van Vleuten is set to retire after the 2023 season.

“I’ve only been on Movistar together with Annemiek, so for sure it is going to be a big change. We need to enjoy the time we have with Annemiek and the time we can still win the Tour de France. Then let’s see next year what is going to happen,” Norsgaard focussed on the here and now instead of speculating about the future.

In a message published on her team’s Twitter account, Norsgaard thanked her team, her family including her brother and fellow Movistar Team rider Mathias Norsgaard, and especially her husband Mikkel Bjerg (UAE Team Emirates).