Twenty-one-year-old Dutch climber Nienke Vinke (Picnic PostNL) has signed a three-year contract with Team SD Worx-Protime, joining the superteam from 1 January 2026 through the end of 2028.
The move, announced on 4 December, is one of the clearest statements yet about who the women’s peloton expects to shape Grand Tours over the next decade.
Vinke’s 2025 results read like a prospectus for a future GC captain: winner of the best young rider jersey at the Tour de France Femmes, ninth overall at La Vuelta Femenina, plus eighth at Flèche Wallonne. All that while still learning how to survive three mountain days in a row.
Sporting director Danny Stam (Team SD Worx-Protime) left little doubt about the long-term plan. "We see in Nienke a rider who can develop into a GC contender in Grand Tours over the coming years, but also one who can finish well in Ardennes races."
Vinke herself has sounded equally ambitious, even after pulling on white in France. "I hope to learn a great deal from them. It’s also a team where winning is very important," she said.
From 2026 she will have the steepest possible finishing school: training and racing alongside Lotte Kopecky (Team SD Worx-Protime) and Anna van der Breggen (Team SD Worx-Protime) and mapping out a return to the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift with a renewed GC focus.
