Van Vleuten credits team effort as the ‘secret’ to retaining Giro title
Annemiek van Vleuten retained her title in the Giro Rosa, the longest and most prestigious race in women’s professional cycling, and praised the team who had helped her through its most mountainous edition.
The Mitchelton-scott side have one of the most complete rosters to deal with the Italian race’s unique challenges. In Australian Lucy Kennedy they have an excellent climber to do the donkey work, while Amanda Spratt finished third overall, and provided a true alternative had their Dutch leader for some reason faltered.
“In a one-day race maybe you can win on your own, a Giro d’italia you cannot. It’s not just the riders, but you need the staff, we took it very serious and maybe that is one of the secrets, we came here as the best prepared team and that paid off,” Van Vleuten said, before explaining why she took nothing for granted before the final stage.
“It was more easy to go to sleep because you have three minutes [lead], but still everything can happen; crashes, missing something in front, so I took it day by day, not thinking about the victory, but I took a lot of confidence.”
It was victory in stage five, on the road to Lago di Cancano, 2,000 metres up in the Alps, which was crucial. The current world time-trial champion is also a consummate climber and had attacked on the opening ramp of the 10kilometre climb, riding solo to win in what is the only grand tour for the women’s peloton.
A second stage victory followed the next day, this time in a 12.1km uphill time trial through the vineyards to Teglio, where she transformed what, two days before, had been a 47-second deficit into a lead of 4 min 17 sec.
Only on Saturday’s ninth stage, on the climb to Malga Montasio, close to the Slovenian border, did cracks appear.
The 36-year-old had attacked on the hardest section, but was unable to resist road compatriot Anna van der Breggen (Boels-dolmans), who surged to victory, reclaiming 21 seconds, cementing second place overall.
Despite her team’s strength, Van Vleuten’s early deficit had come from the opening day’s uphill team trial. There Mitchelton-scott ceded 53 seconds to winners Canyon-sram, world champions in the discipline, whose former Poland champion Kasia Niewiadoma took the overall lead.
Marianne Vos (CCC-LIV) put in a performance redolent of her pomp, winning four stages, each on punchy uphill finishes, though she was unable to compete on the serious climbs, failing to recreate the form which brought her three overall victories in the race between 2011 and 2014.
There was British success, too, Sheffield-based Lizzy Banks (Bigla) winning stage eight with a 12km solo breakaway into Maniago at the end of the race’s longest day on Friday.