There's a version of sponsorship that looks like a logo on a jersey and a polite handshake at a launch event. That was never going to be us.
When Team SD Worx-Protime lined up for this year's Tour de France Femmes, we didn't just want to sit back and watch the racing unfold. We wanted to be there, not just for the podium moments, but for everything around them. We wanted to be a set of hands the team could lean on, and to catch the moments they were too busy racing to catch themselves.
We joined at stage 5 and stayed until the finish.
Racing the race just to reach it
Most people picture following a Grand Tour as trailing gently behind the bunch. It isn't. Roads close hours before the race passes through, so getting to the finish before the riders do means beating them there, down back roads, around closures, sometimes redrawing the whole route an hour before the flag dropped because the plan from the night before no longer held.
The stages here don't start early, so mornings were spent at the bus, watching the team load up, kit go on, last checks happen, the calm before the stages. Then the race would go, and so would we, editing clips in the passenger seat as the kilometres disappeared, trying to get there in time to see them finish what we'd watched them start.
Mont Ventoux
Stage 7 was always going to be different. This was the first time in the history of the Tour de France Femmes that the race finished on Mont Ventoux, and everyone on that mountain knew it. We watched from partway up, not the summit, but close enough to feel the crowd hold its breath before the noise arrived, close enough to understand why this mountain has the weight it does.
It's a day that will be talked about for years, and we're glad we were there for it. But it was one day inside a much bigger one. It wasn't about a single climb, it was about the riders who took on Ventoux, and the team around them who made sure they arrived at that start line ready.
Green, and a room that felt like family
By the final stages, Lorena Wiebes had a secure claim on the green jersey, picking up points wherever the race offered them, over cobbles, crosswinds and mountains, all the way to Nice.
When it was confirmed, the whole team was already waiting at the finish line in Nice, not just for Lorena, but for what her crossing that line meant for all of them. Green t-shirts had been printed with the team's name and Lorena's on them, and the second she came over the line they went on and stayed on. Nobody changed out of them all night. That's this team in one moment: when one of them wins, everyone wears it.
At the end of the Tour, that night, the team didn't split off into separate corners. Riders, mechanics, staff, other partners, all in the same room. That's when a team stops being something you sponsor and starts being something you're part of, sat there, nine stages deep, hearing the stories that never make a race report.
Why we're telling you this
We didn't go to the Tour de France Femmes to stand next to a good result. We went because this team has stories that more people should hear, and because a partnership that only shows up for the podium isn't much of a partnership. We wanted to grow with them, through both wins and hard days.
Consider this the first chapter. We'll be back on the road with Team SD Worx-Protime, and we'll keep telling you what it's actually like inside one of the best teams in the sport.
