Strade Bianche: Tour winner Ferrand-Prévot goes into the spectacular bike race as favourite

When the dust clears on Saturday and you have a clear view of the course of the Strade Bianche race, when the best have arrived in the Piazza del Campo in the historic centre of Siena, then you know a lot about the current pecking order in women's cycling. The women's race is a rendezvous of the world's elite - all the active Tour de France winners, Olympic champions and world champions are at the start. Last year's winner Demi Vollering will start the race with bib number one. For many experts, however, it is not the Dutchwoman who is the top favourite, but Pauline Ferrand-Prévot: the Frenchwoman dominated the Tour de France last year and previously proved how strong she is in one-day races on difficult terrain when she won Paris-Roubaix. Like Tour winner Pogacar in the men's race, the Tour winner in the women's race will also be making her season debut at Strade Bianche. Ferrand-Prevot knows how to prepare meticulously and she is ambitious enough to want to prove herself as the best on the white gravel roads. "I feel very good," said "PFP at a press conference organised by her team Visma-Lease a bike, back from a three-week altitude training camp in Tenerife. With the multiple cross world champion Marianne Vos, she should have a congenial partner in the team when it comes to reacting flexibly in the race.

Will there be a new record winner?

Last year, Ferrand-Prévot had finished behind winner Vollering and runner-up Anna van der Breggen. However, she had only just returned to road cycling as an Olympic mountain bike champion - but it was already clear that she would make the transition back to road cycling without any major adjustment problems. Last year, van der Breggen was the final companion of the eventual winner. But this time, the 2018 winner said before the race that she was mainly there to help her team-mate at SD Worx-Protime, Lotte Kopecky. However, the two-time road world champion has yet to show exactly how well she has recovered from her form crisis at the end of last season. Her season debut a week ago at the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad didn't really allow any conclusions to be drawn. Kopecky and Vollering were once team-mates - now they are rivals. One of them could become the sole record holder if she wins.

The who's who of women's cycling at the start

Alongside Vollering and Ferrand-Prévot, Katarzyna Niewiadoma will be the third Tour winner at the start. The Polish rider from the German team Canyon-SRAM-zondacrypto has already been gravel world champion, she masters the gravel roads and has finished second three times. It is rumoured that the 31-year-old is starting this season with particular ambition. The competitors should also have the winner of the Giro d'Italia, Elisa Longo Borghini, on their radar. The aggressive leader of the UAE-ADQ team always wants to ride particularly well in her home country of Italy - and win if possible.

So the line-up is exquisite. Anyone who wants to criticise the start list could at best criticise the fact that Olympic champion Kristen Faulkner and time trial world champion Marlen Reusser are not taking part. But Faulkner has no special memories of the race in which she was once disqualified for using an unauthorised glucose meter. She will be replaced by reigning world champion Magedeleine Vallières as captain of Team EF Education. And Reusser is unlikely to feel particularly comfortable on the slippery descents - she has every reason to avoid risks on her way to the big season goals at the Tour de France. The off-road specialists Puck Pieterse (Fenix-Premier Tech) and Shirin van Anroij (Lidl-Trek) are also likely to want to have a say in the top places.

Liane Lippert could be one of the front runners

Unlike in the men's race, there is a good chance that a German will end up at the top of the results list in the women's race. Liane Lippert doesn't really enjoy such high altitude metres (around 2,200 metres for the women over 133 kilometres), but she still came seventh once in 2023. And she has set herself the goal for this season of keeping up with the best in the mountains for longer - so that she can help her team-mate Marlen Reusser in the Tour de France Femmes in the high mountains for as long as possible. In the race over the numerous gravel sectors, the 28-year-old from Friedrichshafen has the leading role in Team Movistar. The German champion Franziska Koch showed herself to be strong at the start of the season, but in her new team FDJ-SUEZ she is likely to mainly do positioning work for captain Demi Vollering. Gravel specialist Rosa Maria Klöser (Canyon-SRAM-zondacrypto) is the only other German in the peloton as Niewiadoma's helper.