I've missed a LOT in the last few days.
So, let's catch up on what's happened this week.
Firstly, last weekend while I was distracted by the Vuelta and the Boels Rentals Ladies Tour, we had the Premondiali Giro della Toscana, unfortunately for Brunello Fanini and his organisatory committee a bit further away from the World Championships this year so the field did suffer a bit for it. The Italian teams were there in force, sure, and WNT sent a good strong team, laden with climbing talent that obviously wasn't likely to hit its full potential in a flatter-than-usual BRLT. The BTC team were out there looking for contracts, for those who have yet to find them (more on that later), and Drops, Minsk and other development teams rocked up. Arlenis Sierra won the prologue for Astana, a strong fillip for her after a quiet season - she has a lot of points on CQ, but they are mainly picked up from her races in North and Latin America and in the WWT she has been very quiet this year; she got a clear advantage over the Russian 20-year-old Maria Novolodskaya and the not-much-older Karlijn Swinkels of Alé-Cipollini. Chursina of BTC was in 4th and, being a solid climber, seemed like potentially the biggest threat. The first road stage went to a reduced sprint of around 30 in the lead group, which was won by Chloe Hosking, with Sierra defending her lead by virtue of finishing 2nd at the line, with Rasa Leleivyte taking the extra bonuses. The final stage had an uphill finish in Pescia after heading from Lucca, the race's base, through Capannori, where Michela Fanini was killed. 9 women made up the front group, with WNT contributing possibly all of the three strongest climbers, Ane Santesteban, Erica Magnaldi and Clara Koppenburg, but they didn't have the sprint for the finish, where again Sierra was ironwoman and finished second, this time behind Soraya Paladin who has been one of the season's revelations. Leleivyte again was 3rd, outsprinting from the remainder of the group Chursina and Santesteban, with the other climbers on WNT complemented by Omer Shapira, the Canyon rider with an Israeli national squad, and Drops' young Elizabeth Holden. Novolodskaya was dropped and so she dropped away from the podium, while Paladin and Chursina climbed up.
Final GC:
1 Arlenis Sierra (Astana) CUB 6'24'24
2 Soraya Paladin (Alé-Cipollini) ITA +12"
3 Anastasiya Chursina (BTC City-Ljubljana) RUS +14"
4 Rasa Leleivyte (Aromitalia-Basso) LTU +18"
5 Clara Koppenburg (WNT-Rotor) GER +23"
6 Elizabeth Holden (Drops) GBR +24"
7 Ane Santestebán González (WNT-Rotor) ESP +24"
8 Erica Magnaldi (WNT-Rotor) ITA +26"
9 Omer Shapira (Israel National) ISR +29"
10 Chloe Hosking (Alé-Cipollini) AUS +47"
We also had two French races on the same day (a bit of a bizarre scheduling clash, seeing as obviously a lot of national calendar teams won't have been able to do both). First was the women's version of the GP de Fourmies-La Voix du Nord, a flat race in the Nord region which was in its first incarnation as a UCI race. The péloton attracted by the race was fairly limited, largely restricted to the smaller French, Dutch and Belgian teams (such as Doltcini-Van Eyck and Jos Feron Lady Force), although with a couple of the WT teams like Lotto-Soudal and FDJ adding a bit of star power. Rally-UHC were also there, ahead of the Tour of Belgium. Thi That Nguyen won the sprint for Lotto, the Vietnamese's first European win of the season (she took a stage of the Tour of Zhoushan Island earlier in the year), ahead of former surprise Belgian national champion Kaat Hannes and the Doltcini-Van Eyck sprint squad.
Result:
1 Thi That Nguyen (Lotto-Soudal) VIE 3'08'17
2 Kaat Hannes (Jos Feron Lady Force) BEL +st
3 Pascale Jeuland (Doltcini-Van Eyck) FRA +st
4 Kelly Druyts (Doltcini-Van Eyck) BEL +st
5 Melissa van Neck (BePink) CZE +st
6 Sophie Almeida (DN Auvergne Rhône-Alpes) FRA +st
7 Sarah Inghelbrecht (Mexx-Watersley) BEL +st
8 Danique Braam (Lotto-Soudal) NED +st
9 Clara Copponi (FDJ-Nouvelle Aquitaine) FRA +st
10 Katia Ragusa (BePink) ITA +st
Later in the day we had the Chrono Champenois, a 33km time trial which is, in fact, longer than the Worlds most years. This attracted a small field with a lot of the favourites for the World Championships ITT not putting their cards on the table or instead racing in the Netherlands, so the field was very limited. The World Cycling Centre did contribute quite a bit of intrigue for it, with Marlen Reusser continuing her excellent year in tests against the clock, following wins in Ljubljana-Domzale-Ljubljana, the European Games and the Nationals, with a podium here. The real battle was a very close one, however, between Norway's (formerly Latvia's) Vita Heine and Team Virtu's Mieke Kröger, with the two separated by just four seconds in the favour of the Norwegian; Hitec Products' often beleaguered team will be glad for the success, and there's a certain irony in it, with Virtu's development having proven a big problem for the formerly very strong Hitec, who used to be a rite of passage and the first port of call for pretty much all Scandinavian talents; Virtu usurped them in that role, but are now collapsing while the low-budget Norwegian operation continues apace, and may well find itself providing a home for some of the riders left without a job by the Virtu withdrawal. The oft-controversial Zabelinskaya was in attendance, but some way off the pace, so it seems chances of repeating her Olympic and Worlds heroics in Harrogate are unlikely.
Result:
1 Vita Heine (Hitec Products-Birk Sport) NOR 44'35
2 Mieke Kröger (Virtu Cycling) GER +4"
3 Marlen Reusser (UCI World Cycling Centre) SUI +29"
4 Hayley Simmonds (BTC City-Ljubljana) GBR +39"
5 Eugenia Bujak-Alickun (BTC City-Ljubljana) SLO +44"
6 Teniel Campbell (UCI World Cycling Centre) TRI +48"
7 Olga Zabelinskaya (Cogeas-Mettler) UZB +1'45"
8 Anastasiya Pliaskina (Russia National) RUS +2'24"
9 Elyzaveta Oshurkova (Russia National) RUS +3'08"
10 Sarah Storey (Great Britain National) GBR +3'10"
Next up, we had the Lotto Belgium Tour, a four-stage race around western Belgium which attracted a pretty good field as it ran mid-week, albeit assisted with a significant number of national squads to pad out the startlist. Lotto (obviously), Parkhotel Valkenburg and the Belgian national calendar teams made up the rest of the list, but national teams for USA, Germany, France and Norway bringing in a lot of strong names such as Ruth Winder, Liane Lippert, Coryn Rivera, Emilie Moberg, Katie Hall, Audrey Cordon-Ragot and Mieke Kröger, fresh from her 2nd place in the Chrono Champenois. Winder won the 5km ITT that opened the race up, ahead of Kröger who had her second near miss in three days, losing to the American by under a second, but with a 12" advantage over third-placed Coryn Rivera. Kröger wouldn't have to wait long, however, to rectify that problem, as she got into the decisive move the following day, alongside Audrey Cordon-Ragot and Lotte Kopecky, and with the American national team not willing to sacrifice too much to keep them, and the German and French national teams, plus Lotto being the strongest trade team in the race (Parkhotel Valkenburg are higher-rated internationally but with no Vollering or Wiebes, and only five riders starting, their impact was limited), nobody was willing to pull them back and the trio eventually gained nearly three minutes, before Kröger used the fact that Kopecky was the obvious winner of a sprint from the three to her advantage, as she and Audrey started to attack to try to make Lotte chase. Audrey did in fact outsprint Kopecky for second, but Kröger took the race lead from a few seconds up the road. Die Mannschaft controlled stage 2 comfortably to take it to a sprint, with Coryn Rivera salvaging some glory for the American team ahead of Susanne Andersen for the Norwegian team. Perhaps more importantly, Lotte Kopecky took some bonus seconds by finishing 3rd at the line, but her rivals finished ahead of the split at +5" that limited her making any further inroads.
The most important stage was always going to be, however, the stage around Geraardsbergen, including the iconic Kapelmuur on the closing circuit. This usually proves decisive in the Lotto Belgium Tour, and indeed it was again, or rather, sort of was. Certainly it broke the field up. Last year, Lotte Kopecky led in to the final stage but was dropped hard on the final day, and Liane Lippert soloed to victory in both the stage and the GC; this year as the defending champion, the young German tried to put on a show and, although obviously with her team already in the leader's jersey with Kröger and with the sizable GC gap, she was a bit hamstrung in what freedom she had to do that. However, when Kröger was dropped and both Kopecky and Cordon-Ragot were still on hand, Liane's role was then to cause as much disruption as possible - Kröger had a pretty sizable lead from the ITT, but the Germans needed to ensure that bonus seconds didn't come into it. They got an unlikely ally in Coryn Rivera, however, who also laid down a pretty sizable marker for the Worlds, having won both a flat sprint and the tougher Geraardsbergen market sprint in the race, with a clear second's margin over Lippert, and she in turn had a couple of seconds' advantage over Sofie de Vuyst, who took third and denied the two others from the Wednesday break their chance to gain enough time over Kröger. For her troubles, Mieke came in 26" back from Rivera, having been dropped from a group with Katie Hall and Susanne Andersen on the final ramp, but still with enough time in hand to preserve her GC victory. It's probably a year or two too soon, but I'm starting to wonder if Liane isn't a dark horse for at least a medal at Harrogate given her performance here and in Britain earlier in the season. She'll probably lose out because she loses out on punch to the Deignans and Niewiadomas of the world, and loses out on sprint speed to the Riveras and Brands, and obviously the Dutch have an absolute embarrassment of riches (and a course that screams "Marianne Vos" to many) which means they are the team to beat, but given her poor Ardennes campaign Liane might be underestimated a bit, you know. And let's face it, nobody is going to be shocked if somebody like Coryn Rivera wins, whereas Lippert would be out of left field...
Final GC:
1 Mieke Kröger (Germany National) GER 8'37'05
2 Lotte Kopecky (Lotto-Soudal) BEL +8"
3 Audrey Cordon-Ragot (France National) FRA +12"
4 Coryn Rivera (USA National) USA +2'33"
5 Liane Lippert (Germany National) GER +3'00"
6 Ruth Winder (USA National) USA +3'02"
7 Sofie de Vuyst (Parkhotel Valkenburg) BEL +3'02"
8 Susanne Andersen (Norway National) NOR +3'15"
9 Emilie Moberg (Norway National) NOR +3'17"
10 Stine Andersen Borgli (Norway National) NOR +3'19
We're also underway with the Tour de l'Ardêche, which has a nice medium mountain to climby parcours, and a strong collection of climbers on the startlist including Merino and García trying to repeat last year's podium success with the Spanish national team, their compatriot Santestebán alongside Koppenburg and Magnaldi with WNT, Movistar-bound Katrine Aalerud with Virtu, Nikola Nosková with a Czech national team, former podium rider here and Ventoux winner Anna Kiesenhofer with the Austrian national squad, Omer Shapira leading a bare-bones Canyon team, Lauren Stephens with TIBCO, Hanna Nilsson with the outgoing BTC team, veterans such as Guderzo, Riabchenko and even 44-year-old Vysotska, and a CCC team including Pauliena Rooijakkers. Oh, and somebody called Vos, who appears to be pretty strong...
So: transfers in the last week or so.
The first ex-BTC riders to find homes are climbers Hanna Nilsson, who will join Parkhotel Valkenburg and presumably become part of their climbing arm along with Demi Vollering, as they expand on the great success they've had this season and that they've already extended both Wiebes and Vollering's contracts, and Rossella Ratto, who joins the new Chevalmeire Cyling squad, based out of the Benelux and expanded out of the extant cyclocross unit led by Thalita de Jong. If nothing else, they're going to generate a few headlines in the Netherlands, seeing as they've also acquired Nathalie van Gogh, the veteran transgender racer who has become a mainstay of the national calendar in her 40s, and Puck Moonen, whose column inches have always far exceeded her results thanks to a particularly virulent strain of Kournikova Syndrome leading newspapers to sometimes solicit her opinions over those of the likes of van Vleuten, van der Breggen, Brand or van Dijk. Ratto is a potentially very useful acquisition as a reclamation project, though - she's undoubtedly extremely talented, but also very flaky in recent years.
The Casa Dorada team which has already acquired Fournier and Jasińska from Movistar and their ex-teammate Rachel Neylan has now been linked to Marta Bastianelli - some scepticism has abounded as to how the team can afford this, as a new team funded by a relatively low-budget operation, which raises the suspicion this may be a labour of love/sugar daddy project along the Aqua Blue lines. Bigla, meanwhile, have signed Niamh Fisher-Black, a teenage New Zealander, not from next year but with immediate effect, as well as tying Elise Chabbey down for another couple of seasons after a good season capped with a top 5 at the Tour of Scotland. Hitec Products have extended with most of their roster, suggesting a pleasing level of stability for them that has been lacking the last couple of years when Karl has struggled to keep the team afloat, as well as adding young Frenchwoman Gréta Richioud to their roster from FDJ. Lotto-Soudal have signed Belgian national champion Jesse Vandenbulcke, who famously works in a bakery alongside her part-time ride with Doltcini-Van Eyck, so the opportunity for the 23-year-old to go full pro will undoubtedly be appreciated. While her national title was a surprise, she does have 4 other top 10s (of which two are podiums) on the national circuit as well as finishing 10th in the Geraardsbergen stage of the national tour (12th overall) so there's definitely some potential there.