Barnes storms to Valenciana hat trick
For the last 12 months, Hannah Barnes has gone from strength to strength. The broken ankle she suffered in August 2015 that left her off the bike for five months and away from racing for eight is almost a distant memory as she continues on an upward trajectory that has now taken in a prestigious stage race win. Barnes’ progression was marked last summer when she took one of the biggest wins of her career so far at the Giro Rosa. Two months later, she was one of the key aggressors at the Worlds in Bergen, putting in a performance that led Great Britain team-mate Lizzie Deignan to call the 24-year-old “a future world champion”. And her good form has continued into 2018 at the Setmana Ciclista Valenciana.
The race is only in its second year and featured a mix of hilly, rolling stages and flat finishes. Barnes’ Canyon-SRAM team, bolstered by the arrival of Katarzyna Niewiadoma over the winter, spent the week prior to the European season opener on a training camp in the area previewing the parcours, and the effects showed as not only did Barnes win two stages and the overall, Niewiadoma and Pauline Ferrand-Prévot both finished in the top 10 overall. Before the race, Barnes predicted the first and last stages would suit the GC contenders, with the middle two stages suiting the sprinters, and that was exactly how it unfolded. With two categorised climbs in the closing 30km of stage 1 to Gandía, the peloton split to pieces as a reduced group of 22, including Barnes, came together to sprint for the finish. Barnes won the dash to the line, then retained her leader’s jersey after stage 2, finishing second in the sprint to Alé Cipollini’s Marta Bastianelli. The Italian got her revenge on day three, taking the jersey by one second, as Dutch rider Nicole Steigenga won the sprint. Yet Canyon’s strength proved decisive on the final day in Benidorm, as Barnes, Ferrand-Prevot and Niewiadoma were part of a ninerider breakaway that went clear, and stayed away. Barnes again won the sprint, and with it secured the first stage race overall win of her career.
Barnes raises her arm as she wins the opening stage sprint