Tageblatt.lu | Elsy Jacobs Festival

With a total of six Luxembourgers, the 18th edition of the Festival Elsy Jacobs will most likely take place this year. Three of them will start in the Luxembourg/Iceland mixed national team. In addition to Lena Lallemang and Maïté Barthels, the focus will primarily be on Nina Berton. The 24-year-old has received approval from her team EF Education-Oatly and is one of the drivers to be reckoned with in the Elsy Jacobs races. Berton showed strong performances in the first half of the season (including 9th place at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad) and will lead the national team.

Also there is regular guest SD Worx Protime, which will start again with Marie Schreiber. With 74th place at the Scheldeprijs (1st Pro), the 23-year-old only has one day of racing on the road under her belt. The Dutch team also includes Marta Lach, who was able to celebrate twice in 2024 and once last year. Minimax will also be competing in Luxembourg with Gwen Nothum and the only club team at the start, KDM-Pack, will be competing with Layla Barthels. “So we have six Luxembourgers at the start,” says Michel Zangerlé, President of SaF Zéisseng. “It’s a good thing and we’re happy about it. We hope that they’ll be active and get involved.” Liv Wenzel, on the other hand, is missing as a local driver. The 22-year-old will compete in another race for her Team Tirol parallel to the race in Luxembourg.

Fränk Schleck has to cancel

A total of three teams from the WorldTour are at the start: SD Worx Pritme, Visma Lease a Bike and AG Insurance Soudal. Actually, Lidl-Trek, the team for which Fränk Schleck has been the women’s manager since this season, should have started in Luxembourg. But Schleck had to cancel Zangerlé. Of the 19 riders in the team’s squad, seven have already been assigned to the Vuelta, which begins on May 3rd. In addition, according to the Lidl-Trek team, eight other riders are not ready for action due to injuries or other reasons. The peloton is completed by ProTeams Cofidis and VolkerWessels, ten other continental teams, two national teams and KDM-Pack as a club team.

If you look at the stages, not much has changed. On Saturday there are 112.4 kilometers around Garnich, and a day later 121.6 kilometers around Cessingen. “Nothing should be changed about the stages at all. Unfortunately, we had to change something in extremis, that’s not even included in the guide technique. There was a construction site in front of Leudelange, we couldn’t and didn’t want to use these roads,” says Zangerlé.

Attractive field

Because the SaF Zéisseng has wanted to serve more as a springboard for talent since the downgrade from ProSeries to 1.1 races, the really big names are missing this year. Also because female cyclists have more and more racing offers in their program, the really big female cyclists are not in Luxembourg. “When names like Anna van der Breggen or Demi Vollering were with us, there were a lot fewer races than now,” said race director Claude Losch. “Back then we wanted to offer something to the women – and also the Luxembourg women. Now there’s a lot to choose from and the Vuelta even starts parallel to our race.” FSCL President Camille Dahm added: “SaF Zéisseng is the club that has started to do something for the women. Nobody can take that away from them.”

With the already mentioned Lach, Victoire Berteau (Cofidis, French national champion 2023), Nienke Veenhoven (Visma Lease a Bike, 2nd at the Scheldeprijs), Schreiber’s cyclocross competitor Viktoria Chladonova (Visma Lease a Bike), Eline Jansen (VolkerWessels, 5th at A travers la Flandre) or the young French talent Amandine Muller (AG Insurance Soudal), Luxembourg fans can still look forward to cycling at a very high level on May 2nd and 3rd.

SaF Zéisseng is pleased that since the change to two one-day races there has been mainly positive feedback. “The female cyclists are happy, the UCI and we are too. We were even surprised that we were still attracting WorldTour teams,” says Zangerlé. “Whether we will continue like this in the next few years is still up in the air.”