Simac Ladies Tour jury mistake, confusion puts Lorena Wiebes out of European Champion's jersey on stage 3

Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx-Protime) winning stage 3 of the Simac Ladies Tour wasn’t out of the ordinary at all – it was her seventh stage victory across the last five editions of the Dutch stage race. The surprise was that Wiebes did it wearing a regular SD Worx-Protime kit and not her European Champion’s jersey or the race’s green points jersey. 

Cyclingnews reached out to Wiebes’ team as well as the race organisation on the matter and found out that the confusion was caused by a mistake made during the stage 2 podium ceremony.

On Wednesday, Wiebes had won stage 2, putting her and stage 1 winner and GC leader Zoe Bäckstedt (Canyon-SRAM) on 25 points each. According to the race and UCI regulations, the first tiebreaker in such a case is the number of stage wins, but both riders had won one stage. 

The race jury then awarded the green jersey to Wiebes as her stage victory was more recent – however, the second tiebreaker is instead the GC placing.

This was only discovered on the morning of stage 3, long after Wiebes had been issued with a green sprintsuit for the stage and pinned her numbers to it. With Zoe Bäckstedt leading both the general classification and the points classification, a proxy wearer for the green jersey had to be found.

Normally, this would be the second-placed rider, in this case Wiebes. But if a rider is a current champion, they are entitled to wear their champion’s jersey, and the classification jersey passes to the next rider in line. 

Since Wiebes is the European Champion and her teammate Lotte Kopecky, third in the points classification after stage 2, is the World Champion, the green jersey was passed on to stage 1 runner-up Lieke Nooijen (Visma-Lease a Bike) who did indeed race the stage in green but missed the front echelon and lost her second place in GC.

This last-minute change, however, left Wiebes without a sprintsuit to race in. She had brought a warmer jacket in the design of the European Champion along to the start, but no white sprintsuit with blue stripes and yellow stars. Instead, the sprinter borrowed a sprintsuit from teammate Femke Gerritse to race and, eventually, win the fast echelon stage in Zeewolde.

Right after the finish, Wiebes put on her European Champion’s jacket again for the stage 3 podium ceremony. With two stage victories in a row, Wiebes now leads the points classification with a ten-point margin to stage 3 runner-up Elisa Balsamo (Lidl-Trek), and the European Champion can wear the green jersey in her own right on stage 4.