SD Worx make their numbers count
When Chantal van den Broek-Blaak attacked with 6km to go in Strade Bianche Donne, taking Elisa Longo Borghini with her, it’s not clear whether Van den Broek-Blaak’s SD Worx team knew that they were on to a good thing. On the positive side, they had a rider up the road, which is an excellent way to win a bike race, especially that close to the finish. On the other, Trek-Segafredo’s Longo Borghini is a better climber, with better results than the Dutchwoman, and a previous winner of this race, in 2017. In five attempts at the race, she’d never come lower than fifth; Van den Broek-Blaak had a single fourth place to her name.
The situation just before Van den Broek-Blaak’s attack was this: a 12-rider lead group were well clear of the rest, and recovering from the effort of chasing down a strong attack from Movistar’s Annemiek van Vleuten and Jumbo-Visma’s Marianne Vos. The politics of the group were fairly straightforward - Vos and Van Vleuten were their respective teams’ sole representatives. Also isolated were BikeExchange’s Amanda Spratt, and Canyon-Sram’s Kasia Niewiadoma. FDJ-Nouvelle Aquitaine had Marta Cavalli and Cecille Uttrup Ludwig, while Longo Borghini had Ellen van Dijk for support. Meanwhile, SD Worx had four riders of the dozen: Van den Broek-Blaak, Anna van der Breggen, Demi Vollering and Ashleigh Moolman Pasio.
Really, all SD Worx had to do was make sure that they either keep things together for Van der Breggen to use her superior climbing strength to win on the final climb to Siena, or to put a rider up the road, to force the others to chase. So when Van den Broek-Blaak attacked, it looked like a clever move, until Longo Borghini joined.
SD Worx looked to be dithering a little. They clearly didn’t have confidence that Van den BroekBlaak would win, because she stopped co-operating with Longo Borghini, sitting in and refusing to come through, while Moolman Pasio and Vollering made attempts to get across the gap. SD Worx were effectively chasing a break with an SD Worx rider in it, though this isn’t as bad as it looks - if it had come back together, Van der Breggen would have been the favourite. They were turning a situation where it looked like they had a less-than50-per-cent chance of winning into one where they had a more-than50-per-cent chance.
But up ahead, Longo Borghini had committed, and her efforts meant that the lead pair went into the final climb with a winning margin. Yet her efforts had also dulled her kick, and while she led most of the way, she had no answer to Van den Broek-Blaak’s attack in the final few hundred metres. The Dutchwoman surged away to win, while Van der Breggen proved that she was indeed the best rider in the group behind by riding to third.
Times are changing in women’s cycling. Van der Breggen is in her last season and Van Vleuten and Vos
can’t go on forever. The two-up attack that Van Vleuten and Vos put in with 12km to go might have won one of them the race two or more years ago, but they were gradually closed down. The anticipated battle of the big teams between SD Worx and Trek-Segafredo fizzled out when Trek’s leader Lizzie Deignan pulled out with illness in the week before the event, and on this occasion Longo Borghini finished second on strength, rather than teamwork - Van Dijk also made the lead group, but had already been on the attack and brought back earlier in the race. That left SD Worx to use strength in numbers to win, even if they didn’t look entirely convinced that they hadn’t blown it. Strade Bianche might not have gone exactly to plan for SD Worx, but it was an effective demonstration of their strength in depth.