Van Vleuten stretches her climbing legs
Nothing is moving on the dark waters of Idefjord. The wooded surrounds are quiet and other than the rumble of the odd car or the buzz of a two-stroke scooter, the Norwegian town of Halden is quiet.
On a nearby deserted harbourside a few hundred metres away a silver commentary box on the back of a lorry is the only evidence the Ladies Tour of Norway was in town just hours before. The finish line gantry and barriers are gone, the hospitality trailer is nowhere to be seen, and the sense of melancholy which always settles when a bike race leaves town is palpable.
That atmosphere is perhaps more evident in Halden as the town has always hosted at least one stage and is where the organisation of the race is based. In the first five of its seven editions the race rarely ventured too far away. However, under the management of Roy Moberg the race has never stood still, and while many of the stages remain in the area between the town and Oslo, no two editions of the race have been the same.
In 2019 the entire race decamped in a fleet of chartered ferries across the Oslo fjord for the first time. However, the move produced the same kind of rolling, gnarly sprint stage the race had done before. So for 2021 they moved on again, once more to the west of Oslo, but this time for a real mountain stage to the Norfjell ski resort 1,000m up in the Scandes Mountains.
As it is a WorldTour event, the organisers can guarantee top riders on the start list, but this edition brought some who might not have been there had it not been for this true climbing stage.
One of those was newly-crowned Olympic TT champion Annemiek van Vleuten, who took the start for stage 1 in Halden having protested in local television interviews that she was not there for the GC. As it turned out, despite her Olympic celebrations leaving her with what she called “party legs”, the Movistar rider dominated the climb, beating SD Worx rider Ashleigh Moolman Pasio and going on to take the overall by 39 seconds the next day.
The ease with which she took that win cannot be good for women’s cycling. We haven’t yet seen a true head to head with Demi Vollering, but only when Vollering’s SD Worx team-mate Anna van der Breggen is there do we see a real race for mountain-top victories. And with Van der Breggen retiring at the end of the year we can expect to see more of the same, at least until the likes of New Zealand’s Niamh FisherBlack, another SD Worx rider, and her compatriot from CanyonSRAM, Mikayla Harvey, blossom.
Though the Giro Donne regularly takes the peloton into the mountains, in recent years such finishes have not been common in women’s racing and the sport has not been attractive to pure mountain goats. However, more mountainous races are appearing.
In May this year we saw the two Dutch superstars duking it out at the top of Lagunas de Neila, where Van der Breggen won the day and the GC of the Vuelta a Burgos, and next year the four days of Itzulia Women are certain to provide some stiff climbing. Add the Tour de France Femmes and if the sport is not to be predictable it needs more true climbing talent to profit from the new climbing territory.
As the addition of the Norfjell stage shows, each edition of the Ladies Tour of Norway has been an evolution. The smoothness with which the race, which previously had been headquartered in one place, moved itself around the country showcased the excellent organisation. Behind the final podium riders and team staff were effusive in the praise they offered to race staff. Everything from covid-19 testing, excellent hotels and accurately predicted transfer times were on point.
This edition is expected to have been the final one, the organisation replacing it with the six day Battle of the North, due to start in Denmark before moving on to Norway, so Moberg and his team might have been forgiven for resting on their laurels in 2021. That they didn’t shows the future is bright.
Despite her Olympic celebrations leaving her with what she called “party legs”, Van Vleuten dominated the climb, beating SD Worx rider Ashleigh Moolman Pasio