EF-Oatly-Cannondale strengthened their roster for a second season on the Continental stage by signing Swiss street race champion Noemi Rüegg to a three-year extension and including Dutch U23 standout Babette van der Wolf by means of 2025.
Subsequent yr’s roster is loaded with younger expertise, seven riders 26 years previous or youthful. Rüegg and Van der Wolf can be key riders to help a full spring Classics marketing campaign, which can now embrace veteran Australian Sarah Roy as a frontrunner. Roy was signed final week to a one-year contract with EF-Oatly.
Rüegg was among the many first 5 riders confirmed for the newly fashioned Continental ladies’s workforce when it launched for the 2024 season. She wasted no time in making an instantaneous affect, scoring the primary win for the squad on the opening day of Problem Mallorca Femenina on the Trofeo Felanitx-Colònia de Sant Jordi.
It was not simply the workforce’s first victory, however Ruegg’s first win as a professional and she or he adopted two days later with second place at Trofeo Binissalem-Andratx.
“The ambiance on this workforce is absolutely particular and one thing I’ve by no means skilled in a workforce earlier than. I really feel so welcomed within the workforce,” mentioned Rüegg, who started her professional profession at age 19 at Cogeas-Mettler. “It makes it loads simpler to carry out when you’re surrounded by good individuals.”
2024 was a stellar season for the two-time junior Swiss champion, who received the elite ladies’s street race nationwide title and earned seventh place within the street race at her first Olympic Video games. She had spent the earlier two seasons at WorldTour stage with Jumbo-Visma, taking third on GC at AG Tour de la Semois and eighth general at RideLondon Classique.
“This yr, I received loads of help from the workforce. They gave me the chance to race the finales and likewise to make loads of errors. That is additionally actually vital as a result of in any other case you do not be taught. The workforce gave me loads of confidence and I believe that is what I wanted.”
Van der Wolf, who joins fellow Dutch standout Mirre Knaven because the youngest riders on the squad subsequent season, turned professional in 2023 with Lifeplus Wahoo. This season she amassed seven prime 10 outcomes at one-day races, together with third at Antwerp Port Epic, and earned a trio of prime 10s on levels on the Baloise Girls Tour.
She concluded the yr with twelfth place on the UCI Gravel World Sequence occasion on the Sea Otter Europe, confirming her useful expertise as a one-day racer on any floor.
“2023 was simply a tremendous expertise. I began with Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, the Tour of Flanders and I even rode the Tour de France. I used to be simply 18 and racing the Tour de France – that is simply loopy,” she mentioned whereas with Lifeplus.
“Simply being there and driving the races on the very best stage is simply unimaginable and in loads of races, I attempt to assist each teammate.”
Throughout that point she additionally gained expertise on the observe, successful a gold medal within the junior Madison race with Nienke Veenhoven. She had top-10 ends in the Factors and Elimination races on the 2024 European Observe Championships.
“I am the kind of rider who races with loads of coronary heart. I haven’t got the most important engine within the race however I do have a imaginative and prescient of how the race goes to play out, so I’m able to react instantly or to speak to my teammates what’s about to occur and we will reply,” she mentioned in an EF-Oatly-Cannondale press launch.
“If there’s loads of wind, that makes me excited. I do know I’m actually Dutch after I say that I really like a tough echelon day. Possibly add in some cobbles and punchy climbs. I simply take pleasure in a tough race.”
