ONE WOMAN SHOW

Before the women’s road race at the world championships the last few years, the main question has been: which Dutch rider is going to win? And in this year’s race, on the tough course in Innsbruck, this had been further modi ied: which of Anna van der Breggen and Annemiek van Vleuten will win?

Through 2018, Van der Breggen and Van Vleuten have won most of the big races between them – the former took out Strade Bianche, Liège-Bastogne-Liège and Flèche Wallonne, while the latter won the Giro, La Course and the Boels Ladies Tour. There have seldom been two such overwhelming favourites in a bike race, and the only doubt came from the fact that while both rode for the same team, both desperately wanted to win a irst rainbow jersey.

The Innsbruck course did its work, and when it emerged after the race that Van Vleuten had been riding with a serious injury (yet would still come in seventh), it was clear that there had only been one possible winner. Van der Breggen simply rode away from the others, in the most one-sided world championships race since Bernard Hinault won the men’s race in 1980. Only one rider inished within ive minutes; another four within seven. The unique selling point of women’s racing at the moment is that it is far more unpredictable and exciting than the men’s side of sport at the elite level. There was nothing unpredictable about this race, yet nobody seemed to care – when a rider is able to exert such dominance over their rivals, sometimes you just have to sit back and applaud.