Certain rules of women's cycling were adhered to - Małgorzata Jasińska went on a doomed escapade, and Marianne Vos won a complex uphill finish. Dani Rowe on the commentary explaining Rooijakkers can't really progress beyond her current role at the moment because while she's a really good climber, she is a very nervous rider who struggles to place herself in the péloton so gets dropped off the back when the pace is high in flat stages a lot - certainly a problem for a Dutch rider with their style of waaijer racing and road furniture!!!
A shame that some road conditions meant they had to erase one of the ascents from earlier in the stage - the only categorised one - but the others were present and correct and included some that were harder than the uncategorised ones. And besides, given the layout of the stage, the final rise into Assisi was going to be the difference maker regardless.
With the time gaps involved, I think we can say that the TTT might actually be the biggest obstacle to a Cille podium here, as she was the last one to go with Annemiek yesterday (though she paid for it in the long run and it seems Kasia paced things better, riding back to van der Breggen on the final climb) and she was the strongest of the GC mix today by several seconds' clear advantage. We also learnt that Sunweb do have some good form so who knows what might have happened without the mechanical problems on the sterrato yesterday - Lippert looking much like her usual self with this finish and the team working hard to lead into the climb at pace, and also an excellent uphill finish from Lotte Kopecky as well as another day of really strong prominent performance from Mikayla Harvey - is she the revelation for this year? Can she keep it up for all 9 days?
Another thing that was a shame was that the climb had to be abridged due to the safety issues and so the finish was moved down to a lower square - one wonders how much more of a difference the climb may have made had they done it in full, given it broke the race up very quickly, but on the plus side, it meant they took a steeper road to get to it to make up for the loss of the longer element of climbing. And you know, in women's cycling, give the elites a 700m climb and they'll race it for 700m. Sometimes in the Tour it's felt like you give them a 20km climb and they'll probably race it for 700m. And also, while some rules of women's cycling were adhered to, a case of poor positioning on the short climb meant that Niewiadoma was unable to launch a full attack as she is mandated by law to do when the road goes uphill, and instead had to fight on to the briefly-escaping group of 5 - Vos, Uttrup, Kopecky, Lippert and Longo Borghini who was really trying to fight her way back into contention. The fact that these six riders managed to distance Anna and Annemiek was a real eye-opening moment that means that some of these riders might fancy they have more of a chance than they might have thought this time yesterday - well, Kasia and Cille at least. The others mightn't be so sure because they lost too much time yesterday, but nevertheless, especially given Boels have sent a largely rouleuse-oriented team and Mitchelton don't look quite as strong as anticipated with Spratt a bit below what we've come to expect from her the last 2-3 years form-wise when she's hit the Giro in super form, the two super-strong Dutchwomen don't seem quite as unbeatable as they did 24 hours ago.
What I took from the finish, though, is that Cille is really, really good at the super-steep gradients. She's manoeuvring herself into a sort of wallrider role, à la Purito. Lippert is really good too, taking scalps of most of the GC men/women, and bearing in mind she's only 22, she's got a good couple of years to get stronger at which stage she could be a truly elite puncheuse or she could turn herself into a stage racer. She might well be an outside bet for a medal at the Worlds in a couple of weeks. However, she might be a year or two away from that level, it's hard to tell because she's already competing on a level with the Niewiadomas and Longo Borghinis of this world, backing up her performances from Thüringen and the Women's Tour with this - given she's also good on the cobbled bergs I suspect her skillset is more Gilbert than GC racer, but at the end of the day, nobody can compete with the finishing punch of Eddy Merckx, because, you know, MERCKX. It looked like timing was important and that poor placement coming into the final climb cost Kasia as when the sprint was opened out by the likes of Vos and Uttrup, she was left pedalling squares having expended her effort getting to the group, and she fell behind Annemiek and finished alongside Anna VDB at the bottom of the top 10. Santesteban showing some form as well, and Mavi García holding hers from the Ardêche. Solid finish just outside the top 10 for Katia Ragusa as well, looking at her palmarès she did well in short punchy finishes in Burgos last year too, so might be one to keep an eye on.
Amazing sights of the riders having to dismount after finishing and push the bikes the rest of the way up given they'd had to move the finish down the hill though. Mikayla Harvey in particular looked spent, while Cille was looking rather non-plussed about the whole thing and what was going on in front of the camera as well. Lotte Kopecky in particular just ground to a halt almost the instant she crossed the line and it looks like Niewiadoma took slow-motion evasive action to prevent herself having the world's slowest accident hitting the Belgian's bike at the line as she was "sprinting" to the line with van der Breggen and Moolman-Pasio, though realistically nobody is going to come to any harm to anything other than their pride at that speed. And although she might now be out of the GC mix, ELB will definitely be looking for stages now she's got her customary bad day out of the way...
A shame that some road conditions meant they had to erase one of the ascents from earlier in the stage - the only categorised one - but the others were present and correct and included some that were harder than the uncategorised ones. And besides, given the layout of the stage, the final rise into Assisi was going to be the difference maker regardless.
With the time gaps involved, I think we can say that the TTT might actually be the biggest obstacle to a Cille podium here, as she was the last one to go with Annemiek yesterday (though she paid for it in the long run and it seems Kasia paced things better, riding back to van der Breggen on the final climb) and she was the strongest of the GC mix today by several seconds' clear advantage. We also learnt that Sunweb do have some good form so who knows what might have happened without the mechanical problems on the sterrato yesterday - Lippert looking much like her usual self with this finish and the team working hard to lead into the climb at pace, and also an excellent uphill finish from Lotte Kopecky as well as another day of really strong prominent performance from Mikayla Harvey - is she the revelation for this year? Can she keep it up for all 9 days?
Another thing that was a shame was that the climb had to be abridged due to the safety issues and so the finish was moved down to a lower square - one wonders how much more of a difference the climb may have made had they done it in full, given it broke the race up very quickly, but on the plus side, it meant they took a steeper road to get to it to make up for the loss of the longer element of climbing. And you know, in women's cycling, give the elites a 700m climb and they'll race it for 700m. Sometimes in the Tour it's felt like you give them a 20km climb and they'll probably race it for 700m. And also, while some rules of women's cycling were adhered to, a case of poor positioning on the short climb meant that Niewiadoma was unable to launch a full attack as she is mandated by law to do when the road goes uphill, and instead had to fight on to the briefly-escaping group of 5 - Vos, Uttrup, Kopecky, Lippert and Longo Borghini who was really trying to fight her way back into contention. The fact that these six riders managed to distance Anna and Annemiek was a real eye-opening moment that means that some of these riders might fancy they have more of a chance than they might have thought this time yesterday - well, Kasia and Cille at least. The others mightn't be so sure because they lost too much time yesterday, but nevertheless, especially given Boels have sent a largely rouleuse-oriented team and Mitchelton don't look quite as strong as anticipated with Spratt a bit below what we've come to expect from her the last 2-3 years form-wise when she's hit the Giro in super form, the two super-strong Dutchwomen don't seem quite as unbeatable as they did 24 hours ago.
What I took from the finish, though, is that Cille is really, really good at the super-steep gradients. She's manoeuvring herself into a sort of wallrider role, à la Purito. Lippert is really good too, taking scalps of most of the GC men/women, and bearing in mind she's only 22, she's got a good couple of years to get stronger at which stage she could be a truly elite puncheuse or she could turn herself into a stage racer. She might well be an outside bet for a medal at the Worlds in a couple of weeks. However, she might be a year or two away from that level, it's hard to tell because she's already competing on a level with the Niewiadomas and Longo Borghinis of this world, backing up her performances from Thüringen and the Women's Tour with this - given she's also good on the cobbled bergs I suspect her skillset is more Gilbert than GC racer, but at the end of the day, nobody can compete with the finishing punch of Eddy Merckx, because, you know, MERCKX. It looked like timing was important and that poor placement coming into the final climb cost Kasia as when the sprint was opened out by the likes of Vos and Uttrup, she was left pedalling squares having expended her effort getting to the group, and she fell behind Annemiek and finished alongside Anna VDB at the bottom of the top 10. Santesteban showing some form as well, and Mavi García holding hers from the Ardêche. Solid finish just outside the top 10 for Katia Ragusa as well, looking at her palmarès she did well in short punchy finishes in Burgos last year too, so might be one to keep an eye on.
Amazing sights of the riders having to dismount after finishing and push the bikes the rest of the way up given they'd had to move the finish down the hill though. Mikayla Harvey in particular looked spent, while Cille was looking rather non-plussed about the whole thing and what was going on in front of the camera as well. Lotte Kopecky in particular just ground to a halt almost the instant she crossed the line and it looks like Niewiadoma took slow-motion evasive action to prevent herself having the world's slowest accident hitting the Belgian's bike at the line as she was "sprinting" to the line with van der Breggen and Moolman-Pasio, though realistically nobody is going to come to any harm to anything other than their pride at that speed. And although she might now be out of the GC mix, ELB will definitely be looking for stages now she's got her customary bad day out of the way...
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