Charlotte Kool and Team DSM Women’s program power to UAE Tour stage success

Getting their season underway in perfect style, Team DSM’s Women’s program navigated a potentially dangerous day in the saddle, working excellently as a unit throughout the stage before setting up Charlotte Kool who powered to victory in exemplary fashion; taking the opening win of the race.

Avoiding crosswind threats and always well positioned during the day, communicating well with each other, the team were always towards the fore of the peloton – looking to bide their time, stay safe and work towards a sprint finish with Kool as finisher. An unfortunate crash just outside the final three kilometres saw four of the team’s riders held up, but Franziska Koch guided Kool perfectly under the flamme rouge. Biding her time before launching like a rocket, Kool came past all the other opposition within sight of the line, sitting up to celebrate a brilliant team win.

Speaking after the stage a jubilant Kool said: “It’s amazing, I can’t believe that it happened. We trained really hard over the winter for this. To get such a nice sprint already even when everything didn’t go well, it’s amazing. We lost a lot of our strong lead out riders in the crash and it was really chaotic in the finish but we switched the plan fast. Franzi then did really well positioning me towards the final and bringing me to the right wheel. I felt super and did a good sprint, so it went really well for us. I’m really happy that even with a lot of bad luck in the final we still took a beautiful win. I think overall we did a good job today too. In all of the key moments we were there together and throughout the stage the team showed a lot of confidence in me, which gave me wings and extra motivation. I think for the first race of the season we did really well as a team. We will definitely go for it again tomorrow.”

Team DSM coach Albert Timmer added: “I think in general we can be happy with how it went today. Everything went well until around four kilometres to go when we were caught up in the crash with most of our lead out, which wasn’t ideal, but for the rest of the day we had everything under control so we can be happy with that. In the final we knew that there was a really strong headwind and that you wanted to start the sprint from the back. Charlotte together with Franziska, who positioned her really well, then came from the back and started the sprint late with Charlotte putting in a big effort. We can take a lot of confidence from today and can be satisfied with what we achieved. Onto the next few days now!”