Lesser Known Road Racing for Women Thread

[yaco]

Great to see AVV in her team uniform and bike enjoying a Heineken on Dutch corner.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Not really, after all she's achieved this last couple of weeks she deserves a better beer than that!

 

[RedheadDane]

Re:

Great to see AVV in her team uniform and bike enjoying a Heineken on Dutch corner.

Wonder what would have happened if she'd mixed in with one of the larger groups coming up.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Seeing as the men aren't doing any racing right now, it's up to the women to fill the void, and now the climbers are off on vacation - so far we are aware that Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig (let's get the topic back to her greatness) will be eating chocolate and pizza, while Annemiek van Vleuten has stopped for a beer on Alpe d'Huez. The rouleuses didn't really have much to do for the last week or so, however, mostly leaving the Giro during the brutal mountains of the second half of the race, and with La Course obviously unsuited to the type of rider that is unable to get over the climbs, few entered that either.

Luckily, to their rescue comes the BeNe Ladies' Tour. In its 5th edition, this race heads mostly around the borderlands between Westvlaanderen and Zeeland but moves inland somewhat for its earlier parts. It features a prologue in Oosterhout, near Breda, a bumpy stage including the Molenberg twice, a split stage around Sint-Laureins that includes some kasseistroken, and a final stage of similar provenance around Zelzate. Last year Marianne Vos won it, after pipping Alice Barnes after the young Briton won a two-up sprint between them on the toughest stage. Marianne is back, but Alice is not after suffering her way through the Giro Rosa. Vos has a depleted domestique corps, with Monique van de Ree, Roten Gafinovitz, Yara Kastelijn and teenage mid-season pickup Inge van der Heijden her helpers. Canyon are here, but Lisa Klein leads a team made up pretty much entirely of their young prospects like Tanja Erath and Christa Riffel, helped along by veteran hand Trixi Worrack and the older but similarly inexperienced Leah Thorvilson. Wiggle likewise are without their big guns, so we've got some strong teams but only their odds-and-ends, though there's plenty of international experience there. Alé have Marta on hand, plus their full low countries contingent save for Ensing. UHC's European exploits continue, though this is far less suitable for Katie Hall than La Course was, although stranger things have happened - Rabobank once entered two flat Dutch one-day races on the same weekend as a hilly stage race, and won both races, with Anna van der Breggen and Kasia Niewiadoma.

There's a couple of strong national teams - the Belgian team includes CX ace Sanne Cant and sprint queen and two time winner of this race Jolien d'Hoore, while the Danes have former European U23 RR and TT champion Pernille Mathiesen and Emma Norsgaard. Other names to watch out for would be Lotte Kopecky (Lotto), Susanne Andersen and Nina Kessler (Hitec), Lorena Wiebes (Parkhotel), Roxane Fournier (FDJ), Elisa Balsamo (Valcar-PBM), Eugenia Bujak (BTC), Kaat Hannes (Jos Feron Lady Force), and perhaps most interesting as a wildcard of all, on the UCI World Cycling Centre team there is the Vietnamese Thi That Nguyen, the 25-year-old Asian Road Race Champion who has had a few very interesting results including top 10s in the Trofee Maarten Wynants and the GP de Morbihan in Plumelec, as well as her crowning moment of the season, winning Dwars door de Westhoek ahead of many of the riders she'll face here, such as Wiebes, Kopecky, Balsamo, Druyts and Kuijpers.

The prologue is in the books, and Katie Archibald achieved what I think is her first international win, certainly her first since turning pro, with a very solid margin of 11" over Marianne Vos. How she defends that will be interesting - Wiggle have some limited resources but in Julie Leth they have a very good road captain, and Archibald is plenty capable of competing in the bonus second sprints.

 

[Tim Booth]

Re: The Women's Road Racing Thread 2018

from Kelly Druyts (DOLTCINI - VAN EYCK SPORT)
Happy to announce that our names will change to Mommy and daddy from on January 2019!
http://www.instagram.com/p/BlLR99vAsHe/?utm_source=ig_embed

and from Rachele Barbieri (WIGGLE HIGH5)
Thanks @BeNeLadiesTour for making me start today haven if I could not start yesterday for due to fly delay (9 hours delayed!-Ryanair)
I will start with the last time but I will can start so this is really nice from the organization that have understand the situation! THANKS!!
http://twitter.com/BarbieriRachele/status/1020237095359729665

 

[Libertine Seguros]

That's a couple of pieces of really nice news. Presumably Rachele's been shifted in with a time penalty for her missing the prologue so as not to set too unfair a precedent, but that the organisers had some sympathy for a problem not of her own making is nice.

In the midst of the race, however, it seems that the Cannibal lives on, as Eddy started hunting out the bonus seconds, especially with one sprint coming shortly after the Molenberg, enabling her to move within 10 seconds of Archibald's lead time. Another of those surprising solo attacks - this time Eugenia Bujak gaining a minute and a half on the bunch - meant Archibald was shut out of the second set of bonuses while Vos gladly mopped up the remainders, and on the final cobbles she and Lotte Kopecky jumped across to the Polish Lithuanian Slovene, and the trio worked together to the end, just thwarting the bunch who hit the line just 3 seconds after Vos had outsprinted her breakmates to victory. The mighty Dutchwoman holds a six second advantage over Archibald, and ten over Kopecky, going into tomorrow's split stage where, with an ITT, it's Archibald's chance to win some of that time back.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Lorena Wiebes takes the sprint in stage 2a around Sint-Laureins, taking the very impressive scalp of Jolien d'Hoore - she had been fastest of the sprint for the minor placings behind the break yesterday, and upgrades that to a win in the semitappe thanks to the bunch not allowing an escape to flourish this time. Emma Ryan, the 20-year-old American on Team Rally Cycling, was 3rd, to add to a string of fairly impressive placements this season in North America - she managed some podium places in the Tour of the Gila, the national championships and more impressively the Tour of California where she took some scalps like Coryn Rivera; here she can count the likes of Roxane Fournier, Marta Bastianelli and A Certain Miss Marianne Vos (© Phil Liggett) among those who couldn't outsprint her. Everybody liable to be relevant to the overall finished in the bunch, there were no shock time losses, so all is set for the ITT this afternoon.

 

[RedheadDane]

Re:

That's a couple of pieces of really nice news. Presumably Rachele's been shifted in with a time penalty for her missing the prologue so as not to set too unfair a precedent, but that the organisers had some sympathy for a problem not of her own making is nice.

She was simply given the same time as the Coudeville (sisters?) at the very end of the result list.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Iris Slappendel
‏ @irisslappendel

Iris Slappendel Retweeted Cyclingnews.com

This comparison with men’s cycling is quite painful. But let’s try not always to compare but to see women’s cycling as a young sport with a huge potential. Which I believe it has. And please, don’t try to become like men’s cycling!

Amen, Iris.

Also, Annemiek van Vleuten got a pretty cool welcome home.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Back in a different part of the Benelux, the ITT has set up a potential final day showdown in the BeNe Tour.

The ITT was won by the veteran German Trixi Worrack, of Canyon-SRAM, narrowly pipping her much younger teammate and compatriot Lisa Klein by just one second. The two opened up a bit of daylight, time-wise, to the rest of the field, of whom Katie Archibald, backing up her success from the prologue, was the best, 13" off Trixi's time. For the moment it does still seem that endurance, or at least pacing, is a bit of a problem for Katie as she took far less from the likes of Vos here than she did over just 2km in the prologue, although I don't know if she had some kind of technical problem, a crash or anything like that because all I have is the result sheet unfortunately. Jolien d'Hoore also put in a very good ITT for 4th place ahead of Vos, and Leah Thomas, part of that successful UHC team that has been dominating the US calendar; Leah also won the GC at the Tour de Féminin while the majority of the world's women's cycling focus was on the Giro Rosa.

This sets up an intriguing battle on the final day around Zelzate because it's meant for sprinters but there are some cobbles on the circuit, and the GC now has Marianne Vos with a 1" lead over Katie Archibald and 2" over Lisa Klein, all three of them are capable enough when it comes to sprinting for bonus seconds; Trixi Worrack is also at 4" but doesn't have a sprint weapon compared to the others. Archibald you would say has the weakest hand to play, but she's got good track pedigree and a decent fast finish and a tactical mind for crit racing, short circuits and the madison, while Klein is plenty quick in her own right, hitting the podium at Gent-Wevelgem (I see her as very much a successor to Lisa Brennauer in her combination of TT power and durable sprinting strength), and Marianne Vos is Marianne Vos so she holds most of the cards, anyhow. But there's a further spanner in the works - Jolien d'Hoore is 5th on GC and at +15", if she gets some bonus seconds and Vos doesn't, or Klein or Archibald only get minimal bonus seconds, then she may be able to get close enough that the 10 second time bonus for the sprint win would get her the win - so long as none of the three finish within the top three...

 

[Tim Booth]

Re: The Women's Road Racing Thread 2018

WiggleHigh5 will not be registering for the 2019 women's cycling season
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iS1DehymLZI&feature=youtu.be

 

[GuyIncognito]

Jesus god in heaven who thought that video was a good idea?
If I was employed by the team I'd be angry watching it

Meanwhile, good news, Donostia's about to host a women's race as well

 

[Tim O]

Re:

Jesus god in heaven who thought that video was a good idea?
If I was employed by the team I'd be angry watching it

It’s the Rochelle Gilmore Show. Not much mention of their sponsors, no riders named and thanked, it was all about her. A bit odd.

 

[yaco]

Re: Re:

Jesus god in heaven who thought that video was a good idea?
If I was employed by the team I'd be angry watching it

It’s the Rochelle Gilmore Show. Not much mention of their sponsors, no riders named and thanked, it was all about her. A bit odd.

That's the way Rochelle rocks - It should never be underlooked that she's run a WT team for six years and an Australian CT team for five years while giving countless opportunities to riders, especially young and developing riders.

 

[yaco]

The parcours for the women's Ride London Classic is an embarrassment to the sport of cycling - Surely the women could have raced on the men's parcour.

 

[del1962]

Re:

The parcours for the women's Ride London Classic is an embarrassment to the sport of cycling - Surely the women could have raced on the men's parcour.

a sportive in the morning, followed by men's race which has a circuit - and road closures on another day would be problematic, better to have a one day race for women in a different part of UK where getting road closures would be easier

 

[yaco]

Re: Re:

The parcours for the women's Ride London Classic is an embarrassment to the sport of cycling - Surely the women could have raced on the men's parcour.

a sportive in the morning, followed by men's race which has a circuit - and road closures on another day would be problematic, better to have a one day race for women in a different part of UK where getting road closures would be easier

This makes much more sense - Or could they not ride the men's route earlier in the day.

 

[del1962]

Re: Re:

The parcours for the women's Ride London Classic is an embarrassment to the sport of cycling - Surely the women could have raced on the men's parcour.

a sportive in the morning, followed by men's race which has a circuit - and road closures on another day would be problematic, better to have a one day race for women in a different part of UK where getting road closures would be easier

This makes much more sense - Or could they not ride the men's route earlier in the day.

Unfortunately that would conflict with sportive, last year there where sportive stragglers still riding while mens race finished

Maybe the women could use the box hill circuit the day before (or even a different weekend) if they could get road closures, no chance of road closures further into London though

 

[Libertine Seguros]

It is a painfully clear example of where the women stand in the hierarchy though, of course - below the cyclotourists. And yes, I know the Ride London Sportive gains an awful lot more money than it would if it were a city centre crit, but the women's Olympic race in 2012 was pretty good too, but they don't get to repeat it. Instead we get the myth-perpetuating problem of the men getting an interesting course (even if in the end it led to a sprint on this occasion, RideLondon has at times produced a better race than might be anticipated) and the women's race being a televised crit where little of note happens and continuing to propagate the problematic perception of women's cycling as boring, when if they were offered equality of route we could easily see that not to be the case.

Still, a win for Wild and the beleaguered Wiggle team which, perhaps unsurprisingly, is now going to falter; they have rather followed the route of the Rabo team in that they have progressively lost big names and are now left with only really the one super-banker in any hilly race with Elisa, much as WM3 had that problem last season with Kasia all-too-frequently isolated late on. Kirsten Wild, much like Vos, is able to plug the gaps in the results in the flatter races, but while a few years ago they were one of the major players, they are progressively being shuffled further down the pack as other teams grow; at one point, with Bronzini, Johansson and Longo Borghini, they were one of the most pre-eminent teams, while Boels were still growing into the juggernaut they have now become and while Rabo were still a top team but not quite as dominant as they had been around 2013-14. However, with increased commitment and strong recruitment from the likes of Canyon and Sunweb to take into account as well as Mitchelton/Orica having stronger lead results-getters in both categories with Annemiek and d'Hoore, Wiggle are now at the position of being one of the second-tier, along with the likes of Cervélo (very strong top 3 riders, lack of depth due to small roster so limited race days), Alé (two strong sprinters, middling GC interest) and Waowdeals (big name leader, lots of riders at a good level but not really threatening the big stars' teams' equivalent riders) which is unfamiliar and uncomfortable territory for them and was always likely to impact the budget, especially once losing dependable results sources like Johansson; Brennauer has been good but her best results have not been in the important World Tour races; most of Fahlin's results this year have been while not wearing team colours, and while she is a WWT race-winner, it was a rather out-of-the-ordinary result. Archibald will surely get to a good level and the likes of Audrey Cordon-Ragot will no doubt find a strong team, but with Movistar joining the market and the knowledge that Trek are on the prowl as well to set up a strong new team with Lizzie Deignan as a leader (and rumours that they were looking at Elisa too), they would surely be shuffled further down the totem pole results-wise, and I'm not sure they could keep their biggest riders like ELB and Brennauer that way - and I'm not sure the sponsors would be able to put in the same commitment that Rochelle has previously been able to maintain for the team, were its position to be more like the likes of FDJ or Cylance. It's a similar issue to that being seen by the formerly strong Hitec Products team, which had some excellent results over the years especially from its Italian arm of Ratto, Longo Borghini and Guderzo but also the likes of Emma Johansson and Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio, but has long since been usurped from its position of strength and has gradually been passed in terms of budget and results by other teams until the point we're at now where the team is struggling to survive and has even lost its position as the #1 breeding ground for talented young Scandinavians, with Virtu increasing its profile and Cervélo-Bigla having a strong Scandinavian presence as well.

 

[Tim Booth]

Re: The Women's Road Racing Thread 2018

Team Hitec Products have problems
http://twitter.com/Hitec_Products/status/993825133457526784

Karl Lima
‏@Karl_Lima_Hitec
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So @Hitec_Products will register a UCI team for 2019. 10 years is an important milestone. I apologize for the turbulent 2018 to my riders.
11:52 am - 4 Aug 2018 From Tårnby, Danmark
http://twitter.com/Karl_Lima_Hitec/status/1025816739941154816

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Excellent news that the team will be able to soldier on.

The Women's World Tour got back up and running today with the 42,5km TTT at Vårgårda in Sweden, the race in honour of the mighty Fåglum Brothers. It is the World Tour's only standalone TTT (though a few of them have infected stage races) and a great opportunity to showcase some unique battling - especially now that the World Championships TTT is to be no more. Over the past few years, the same group of teams have duked out the podium - Boels-Dolmans, Rabo-Liv/WM3/WaowDeals, Specialized-Luluemon/Velocio/Canyon-SRAM, and latterly Cervélo-Bigla, who surprised many with their 2016 podium but were able to back it up in style last year.

In respect of the victor, no real surprises were to be had, as the orange juggernaut kept on rolling; Boels-Dolmans have won nearly all TTT events in the last three years and this was no different - they are a large problem where races organising TTTs as part of a stage race are concerned, on the basis that they're generally the strongest team in most races anyway... and they also have the benefit of relatively even top-down strength with nary a weaker rider to tow along; they didn't lose a single rider in the race, and their sextet of Chantal Blaak, Karol-Ann Canuel, Amalie Dideriksen, Christine Majerus, Amy Pieters and Anna van der Breggen features a LOT of flat engine firepower as well as those short bursts of speed that are vital in maintaining the wheel in a fluid TTT - especially Dideriksen, Majerus and Pieters have this quality in spades. They were the strongest team on paper, and they were likewise the strongest team on the road.

A new face joined them in second place, however, just 16 seconds behind - though it's probably no shock to learn that, given their starting lineup of Lucinda Brand, Leah Kirchmann, Juliette Labous, Floortje Mackaij, Pernille Mathiesen and Coryn Rivera, that Team Sunweb were a threat. They were 4th last year, jumping up from 9th in the Liv-Plantur days, and this year having strengthened the TT corps with Mathiesen and with again versatile riders with a good burst of speed top-down in that lineup (Kirchmann, Brand and Mackaij all have decent sprints where needed and Rivera is of course a top level sprinter in her own right), they managed to vault past Cervélo, who move down to third after two runners-up spots in a row; their depth in their smaller squad is of course less, but they have a very well-drilled TTT unit, and beneath their triple-headed leadership group of Lepistö, Ludwig and Moolman-Pasio (I'm more or less making the decision to upgrade Cille of my own volition, as she's a secondary head in climbing races to Ash, but after the July she had I feel she's also a clear cut above the rest of their riders in terms of results priority too), they also upgraded the TT strength with the signing of Ann-Sophie Duyck, with Clara Koppenburg and Emma Norsgaard completing their unit.

This relegated last years' third placed team, Canyon-SRAM, to fourth; they suffered with the loss of Tanja Erath and Tiffany Cromwell on the course so while they may have been scheduled, finishing with just 4 riders, the minimum allowed, probably affected their result compared to the top 3 who all finished with the whole team intact. Their final quartet consisted of Elena Cecchini, Alice Barnes, Trixi Worrack and Lisa Klein, so they had riders with strong TT skills and riders with good burst, but it's notable that all of their hilly riders are absent, even those like Amialiusik who are also capable against the clock and would likely have been beneficial here, while in terms of riders with sprint capabilities and rouleur strength Alexis Ryan being absent and Hannah Barnes being unavailable due to injury possibly affects the team's result too. They came in just ahead of the outgoing Wiggle-High 5 team, despite a very strong on-paper squad of Katie Archibald, Lisa Brennauer, Audrey Cordon-Ragot, Annette Edmondson, Emilia Fahlin and Kirsten Wild; Brennauer and Cordon-Ragot are strong time triallists, Fahlin is more than capable and on home roads, the others are coming off of track performances at the European Championships other than Edmondson who is a more than capable pursuit rider herself; perhaps their performance shows the differences between a TTT made up of strong ITTers and a TTT made up of balanced elements that shows the difficulty of the event in settling a team together.

WaowDeals and Mitchelton-Scott round out the 'major' teams if you like; both were missing some of their stronger names, WaowDeals notably without Vos and Mitchelton-Scott missing Spratt, van Vleuten and d'Hoore and with a Lucy Kennedy making her return after her second injury layoff of the season.

 

[Tim Booth]

Re:

It is the World Tour's only standalone TTT (though a few of them have infected stage races) and a great opportunity to showcase some unique battling - especially now that the World Championships TTT is to be no more.

Ladies Tour of Norway TTT in five days time is also a WWT standalone TTT.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Is it standalone? In that case I stand corrected. I had thought it was part of the stage race.

 

[Tim Booth]

Re:

Is it standalone? In that case I stand corrected. I had thought it was part of the stage race.

originally it was, but I suspect it was a case of 'anything Sweden can do, we can do....'

 

[RedheadDane]

That was quite a stunt there, Marianne.