2024 La Flèche Wallonne Femmes (not in LA), April 17

[Libertine Seguros]

Libertine, are you still with us? How's the heart rate?

La Flèche Wallonne is a stale 10 million bajillion star race!

 

[Samu Cuenca]

So far it hasn't really. In the few races she's done she was already dropped before the finish, and not because she did a lot of work.

Still as a domestique you might end up getting dropped, because a gap opens up that you're not supposed to close. But of course today she must have had her best legs yet this road season.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Kopecky said she will be riding as a domestique.

Why didn't Kopecky pace in the beginning of the climb?

...

 

[JR1012]

Poor NFB. Again bad luck or bad mistake by her? Like in Vuelta last year where she got dropped because of a similar crash. 😕

 

[Pantani_lives]

Apart from the KoM in last year's Tour this is Niewiadoma's first win in five years. After all those second, third and fourth places she deserves it. I was beginning to call her "the woman who's always strong but who never wins." Today she finally got rid of that epitheton!

A next step would be if the commentators finally learned how to pronounce her name: "Nyè-vya-do-ma".

 

[Didinho]

...

I just think it was Vollering's tactic to pace the whole climb to make it hard, otherwise I can't see why Kopecky didn't pull the first 200-300m.

 

[Krzysztof_O]

Apart from the KoM in last year's Tour this is Niewiadoma's first win in five years. After all those second, third and fourth places she deserves it. I was beginning to call her "the woman who's always strong but who never wins." Today she finally got rid of that epitheton!

A next step would be if the commentators finally learned how to pronounce her name: "Nyè-vya-do-ma".

Polish names are not easy! I can tell you that "niewiadoma" in Polish means "unknown" or "uncertain". Niewiadoma's form is not niewiadoma though!

 

[Samu Cuenca]

I just think it was Vollering's tactic to pace the whole climb to make it hard, otherwise I can't see why Kopecky didn't pull the first 200-300m.

And it worked for her last year.

 

[Samu Cuenca]

Cavalli getting 9th is encouraging, but since I have the feeling she isn't exactly scared by bad weather, she might also just have benefitted from that. Still it looks like her and Muzic's recent training camp on Tenerife has paid off.

 

[JosefK]

I just watched the replay ... sweet win for Kasia. I thought for a minute that Vollering was going into robot mode and might catch her, but not this time. Sweet.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Polish names are not easy! I can tell you that "niewiadoma" in Polish means "unknown" or "uncertain". Niewiadoma's form is not niewiadoma though!

Early in her career I dubbed her Katie Unknown for a while.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Rooijakkers getting 6th is pretty crazy.

Rooijakkers is a genuinely brilliant climber and would have a far better palmarès if she could, you know, do anything else. However she's kind of the women's péloton's answer to David Moncoutié in terms of her skillset if not her character; she sits on the back of the bunch, hates fighting for placement in the bunch, so if she has good legs she will usually be spending energy attacking (especially in the climbs) and if she doesn't she'll usually be one of the first decent level names to drop time, and as a result even when she's had good results in mountain stages she's often not had the GC results out of it because of losing time elsewhere where a more protected rider would not be expected to.

I just think it was Vollering's tactic to pace the whole climb to make it hard, otherwise I can't see why Kopecky didn't pull the first 200-300m.

It was more a bit of fun about how last year Kopecky and Vollering went together like toothpaste and orange juice, so Kopecky saying she was going into this race (where Vollering was the obvious leader and defending champion) as a domestique and then not riding on the front at the most visible part of the race was kind of as I expected especially after her Tour show. And after Amstel Gold's shenanigans where they successfully had both Kopecky AND Vollering work for Wiebes only for Lorena to drop the ball so spectacularly at the line, maybe they're wondering if just going full chaos mode like last year might be the better strategy going forward.

 

[Samu Cuenca]

Rooijakkers is a genuinely brilliant climber and would have a far better palmarès if she could, you know, do anything else. However she's kind of the women's péloton's answer to David Moncoutié in terms of her skillset if not her character; she sits on the back of the bunch, hates fighting for placement in the bunch, so if she has good legs she will usually be spending energy attacking (especially in the climbs) and if she doesn't she'll usually be one of the first decent level names to drop time, and as a result even when she's had good results in mountain stages she's often not had the GC results out of it because of losing time elsewhere where a more protected rider would not be expected to.

I am not underrating her climbing ability, but after she continued to push on in a doomed break (although that made sure she wasn't dropped in a descent), I just didn't expect her to be able to hang on on the Mur, where she wasn't even in a good position at the bottom.

 

[Didinho]

I am not underrating her climbing ability, but after she continued to push on in a doomed break (although that made sure she wasn't dropped in a descent), I just didn't expect her to be able to hang on on the Mur, where she wasn't even in a good position at the bottom.

Indeed really impressive today. Has also a beautiful climbing style.

 

[jmdirt]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIak4Mtu4aE