EF-Oatly-Cannondale strengthened their roster for a second season on the Continental degree by signing Swiss highway race champion Noemi Rüegg to a three-year extension and including Dutch U23 standout Babette van der Wolf by 2025.
Subsequent 12 months’s roster is loaded with younger expertise, seven riders 26 years outdated or youthful. Rüegg and Van der Wolf shall be key riders to assist a full spring Classics marketing campaign, which is able to now embrace veteran Australian Sarah Roy as a pacesetter. 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 shaped Continental girls’s workforce when it launched for the 2024 season. She wasted no time in making a direct impression, 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 environment on this workforce is de facto 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 so much simpler to carry out when you’re surrounded by good folks.”
2024 was a stellar season for the two-time junior Swiss champion, who received the elite girls’s highway race nationwide title and earned seventh place within the highway race at her first Olympic Video games. She had spent the earlier two seasons at WorldTour degree with Jumbo-Visma, taking third on GC at AG Tour de la Semois and eighth general at RideLondon Classique.
“This 12 months, I received numerous assist from the workforce. They gave me the chance to race the finales and likewise to make numerous errors. That is additionally actually essential as a result of in any other case you do not study. The workforce gave me numerous 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 phases on the Baloise Women Tour.
She concluded the 12 months with twelfth place on the UCI Gravel World Collection occasion on the Sea Otter Europe, confirming her helpful abilities 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 using the races on the best degree is simply unimaginable and in numerous races, I attempt to assist each teammate.”
Throughout that point she additionally gained expertise on the observe, profitable a gold medal within the junior Madison race with Nienke Veenhoven. She had top-10 leads to the Factors and Elimination races on the 2024 European Observe Championships.
“I am the kind of rider who races with numerous 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 numerous wind, that makes me excited. I do know I’m actually Dutch after I say that I like a tough echelon day. Perhaps add in some cobbles and punchy climbs. I simply get pleasure from a tough race.”
