Thijs Zonneveld hopes a competition for SD Worx will be found: "It's already quite overwhelming and destructive, the domination"

Thijs Zonneveld fears whether there'll be anyone to step up against the dominance of SD Worx we've witnessed not only at this Tour de France Femmes, but this whole season. As of lately, it's been Annemiek van Vleuten 'fighting for the rest' but now that she'll retire at the end of the year, the question is who'll pick up from where she left off.

"I hope it will be interesting, because now it does not bode well," says Zonneveld in the AD podcast In Het Wiel. The analyst is referring to the great success of SD Worx in the past Tour. The team's dominance was particularly underlined by the clean sweep in the final time trial, which was won by Switzerland's Marlen Reusser.

"They've been pretty much unbeatable all spring and this Tour they've won four stages, the general classification, the green jersey and made mistakes in the stages they didn't win, which may have cost them the win. So now it's already quite overwhelming and destructive, the domination."

Zonneveld hopes that the other teams will pick up the gauntlet and take up the challenge. 'I am really curious to see where things will go in the coming years. Teams will have to come up with better riders, train them or form them better. Teams will have to entice SD Worx riders to switch. That you get a different balance of power as a result. But I can well imagine that everyone who now drives at SD Worx thinks: let's keep this together, because then next year we can drive everything to smithereens again.'