Wiebes disqualified from Giro d'Italia Women over bike weight

Dutch sprinter Lorena Wiebes was disqualified from the Giro d’Italia Women hours after winning the opening stage on Saturday, with race officials ruling her bicycle did not meet the sport’s minimum weight requirement. The decision stripped Wiebes of the stage victory and the race leader’s pink jersey, which was awarded to second-place finisher Elisa Balsamo of Lidl-Trek.

The Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) commissaires panel determined Wiebes’s bike weighed 6.78 kilograms, 20 grams below the mandated 6.8kg limit, constituting a breach of technical regulations. The ruling, based on Article 2.12.007 governing non-compliant equipment, is exceptionally rare at the sport’s highest level.

Wiebes’s team, SD Worx-Protime, immediately contested the decision, issuing a statement expressing astonishment and raising serious questions about the weighing procedure. The team claimed there was a discrepancy of more than 50 grams between the first and second official weighings of the bicycle after the stage in Ravenna. Team manager Erwin Janssen told Dutch media that when the team weighed the bike themselves in their truck, it registered 6.83kg, well above the limit.