So, I've been following the wintersports quite avidly in the last few weeks with this having been an Olympic season and all and haven't been putting quite so much focus as I usually do on the sport of two wheels' early season races this year as a result. As a result, rather than the wintersport season winding down while the bigger early-season classics were going on, it really felt like it was still going on apace, and so I kind of keep an eye on what's going on in cycling and realise, holy crap, we're now three races into the World Tour!
Seems like we've had some good races too - Strade Bianche was, as of course we all know, in horrendous weather that made it both hard and muddy and brought back memories of that epic Giro 2010 stage, and saw strong racing with Longo Borghini strong but hamstrung by a bike problem at an inopportune time, leaving Anna van der Breggen alone at the head of the race and really if there is one woman you don't want to give a comfortable advantage to defend to, Anna is that woman, as with her TT prowess and the fact that she is strong on all terrains, she's inevitably going to be difficult to recapture. Although initiating the attacks suggested Anna was the stronger of the two on the day anyway, Elisa has at least enough TT ability to keep Anna honest. It did also help that Boels of course were then not contributing in the chase group behind, and with some very strong riders thereby getting a free ride it did take some impetus out of the chase as the remainder of the péloton hesitated over how aggressively to push for van der Breggen's recapture. Heading towards the end, Niewiadoma used her climbing strength to escape the clutches of that group and join ELB, but even with the two of them working together, it was too late and by this point Anna's lead had grown too big. Kasia can at least take some solace in the fact that she seems to have worked out how to make the best of the climb through the city to the finish, having had a number done on her there in previous years, most notably by Armitstead in 2016, however it must be said that it was inevitable attacks would come as a sprint between Kasia and Elisa is not a heavyweight clash of the sprint stars, shall we say. This is, remarkably enough, Anna VDB's first ever podium at Strade Bianche, whereas Elisa (1st in 2017, 3rd in 2015 and 2018) and Kasia (2nd in 2016, 2017 and 2018) have all become specialists in the race, succeeding year upon year.
Further back, the group splintered further, with Chantal Blaak - who had been in an early attack but had also then been able to run interference and save energy with her teammate leading the race - winning the race through the city from a chasing quartet of herself, the ever-hardworking Janneke Ensing and two Aussies on the Mitchelton-Scott team, the veteran Amanda Spratt and late cycling convert Lucy Kennedy in the 29-year-old's first World Tour race - she won the Tour de l'Ardêche last year so tough terrain is clearly something she's comfortable with, but to finish 5th in her first World Tour race is a clear statement of intent. The Cervélo duo of Ash Moolman-Pasio and Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig were joined by Ellen van Dijk in the next group in before the splintered remains of the field came in piecemeal several minutes down - and only 1/3 of the field managed to make it to Siena on their bikes in the conditions. Truly a day for the tough women. Inevitably therefore Anna took the WWT leader's jersey, while Angelica Brogi of the small Italian Aromitalia team took the WWT U23 jersey - it will be interesting to see the contestants for that jersey this year as the last two seasons it has had an obvious standout candidate - the presence of sufficient stage races harms sprinters' aspirations for it, and in 2016 it was just too easy for Niewiadoma, who took max points from just about every race she entered, while last year Cille took it with a very comfortable lead. The standout talent, you would think, would be Amalie Dideriksen, but with the strength in depth at Boels and the stage racing points, will she get the freedom to pick up the necessary results? Even though she's a former World Champion, you'd think she's got a lot more to contend with in competition in the team hierarchy than the previous winners did, though Deignan's absence obviously helps.
Final hour of coverage here
Speaking of days for tough women, the World Tour moved from Italy up to the Netherlands in the midst of a nasty cold spell, and the roads didn't get much nicer, trading gravel for cobbles and of course "the most rubbish climb in cycling", the mythical VAM-Berg as the péloton took on the Ronde van Drenthe. Many of the specialists in hillier races - Niewiadoma, Longo Borghini and Moolman-Pasio among them - elected not to travel, but van der Breggen did, while this was also the first World Tour run-out of the season for a lot of the sprinters and northern Classics hardwomen, such as Vos, Hosking, Wild, d'Hoore and co.. The race has been lengthened once more - now almost 160km in length, a veritable marathon in the women's calendar - and beefed up with a fourth ascent of the VAM-berg to try to encourage greater selectivity.
It made total sense therefore that the first significant attack of note in the run-in would be from... er... Mavi García in the newly-formed Movistar women's team. This is absolutely not the kind of racing I'd associate with the team, and the roster is mainly about development talents with a more experienced core grafted on top, but she did shake the péloton into action, with Boels, led by the ever-ready Christine Majerus, leading the chase. The big problem that comes with racing on cobbles in terrible weather, however, is that it gets very dirty and very slippery, and the péloton gets very nervous. Lucinda Brand and Chantal Blaak were perhaps the most notable names to get slung to the tarmac as the péloton headed for the climactic sections, but they were also by no means the only ones. The bunch split, and Mitchelton-Scott took over the front group, which numbered around 40, in the hope of keeping the pace high enough to allow d'Hoore to sprint it out. This was women's cycling, however, and so keeping taut control over the péloton for over 30km is a difficult thing to achieve, with so many agitants keen to set up attack moves, counter-attacks and just accelerate the pace more in the hope of favouring their own more durable sprinters over other teams' purer sprinters. The counter-response from Mitchelton was to send Gracie Elvin up the road, but not only did her move not attract much interest from elsewhere, leaving her hanging off the front of the péloton alone, but her advantage was never allowed to exceed ten seconds, meaning that there was seldom any danger of her attack becoming a threat to hold out to the finish as, while Gracie has a good pedigree in this type of event, this has typically been due to her ability on tricky circuits, rolling terrain and short climbs, and less for pan-flat Dutch city circuits. A small group including eventual winner Amy Pieters - so often used in this curveball tactic by Boels last year, as a not-quite-a-sprinter for smaller groups and earlier attacks - was formed, gaining a short amount of time before being chased down by Ellen van Dijk who went up-and-over with - of all people - Jolien d'Hoore in her wheel. Quite why d'Hoore thought this was a more sensible option than the sprint I'm not sure, other than that she may have genuinely been concerned that if anybody in the field was going to solo away from the bunch it would be the venerable time trial deity than is Eleonora van Dijk. More problems with Dutch road furniture and the pace of the field meant crashes put paid to one of the favourites from the group, Lotta Lepistö, who had made the selection and was looking ominous.
It wasn't to be the obvious sprint that we all anticipated though - although it was a sprint it wasn't the one we expected, since Pieters launched from a full 350m out, with Alexis Ryan in her wheel for Canyon-SRAM, and the two somehow pulled out a decent gap. I suspect Pieters, a seasoned pro at this, must have noticed that quite a few of the big guns for the sprint were suboptimally placed going into the final corner so got a pre-emptive move on, and Ryan recognized that this was her best chance to win and went with it. The young American didn't have enough to overcome Pieters, but they did hold on with a decent enough lead from the specialist sprinters behind to save the 1-2 and even get credited with a time gap. Alé-Cipollini continued last year's sprint tactic of including both Hosking and Bastianelli, telling neither to lead out the other, resulting in both getting strong placements, but getting in each other's way in the lead-in. They were, however, able to outsprint Marianne Vos, who led home the first top WT result for Waowdeals, and last year's revelation Coryn Rivera.
The absence of most of the other top points scorers from Strade Bianche meant van der Breggen was not threatened in the WWT leader's jersey, while Sofia Bertizzolo of Astana took over the U23 classification jersey thanks to doubling up on WT races while Aromitalia were not present in the Netherlands.
Which led us on to today's race, the Trofeo Alfredo Binda in Cittiglio, near Varese, and home of the great pre-war campionissimo. It's a hilly race, as you can see from
the profile (I've used the lasterketa burua one rather than the official once which only shows you the circuit then tells you how many times they do it at the bottom, so is a bit misleading), although in recent years the descent from the final climb to Orino has proven just as decisive as the climb, such as Evelyn Stevens struggling to stay with Marianne Vos due to problems adapting to where her pedals needed to be for best descending speed, and Jolanda Neff being chased down by Lizzie Armitstead in 2016. For many years victories had been shared between an exclusive Pooley-Vos two woman club, but last year Coryn Rivera shocked everybody by surviving the hills to win.
Having rested through Drenthe week, most of the world's top climbing / hilly race riders were in action, though having fallen sick Anna van der Breggen was not among them, meaning that the Boels team, while still plenty strong enough with a reigning World Champion (Blaak), a former World Champion (Dideriksen) and a former WWT champion (Guarnier) on board, was not quite as untouchable as it had been in previous years, especially when looking at the firepower now stacked up by Canyon, who lined up Ferrand-Prévot, Niewiadoma, Amialiusik, Cecchini, Cromwell and Hannah Barnes, and the ever-improving Cervélo hydra-head of Moolman-Pasio and Ludwig, while Mitchelton had the same Aussie double act that had proven so successful in Strade Bianche and there were strong teams with multiple contenders for Wiggle, Alé and of course Sunweb, what with the defending champion and all that.
Yet again, weather was foul, with rain lashing down, and the péloton was not the most pleasant to be as well as making the already technical descent from the Orino climb into a treacherous waterslide. The péloton was typically attentive to not allow anything too dangerous to go in the early part of the race, but when the four laps of the double-climb circuit began, Canyon decided to test out their multiple-option attack plan, sending Alena Amialiusik up the road. The Belarusian former European Champion is returning from breaking her hip during last year's Women's Tour, but she's an awesome weapon to have back for Canyon, a versatile option and an extremely strong climber. She spent a long time in the attack moves in Strade Bianche too, and the fact she's too dangerous to allow too much rope to will make her into that versatile weapon that will help Kasia and PFP maximise results in a way that especially the former struggled with last year, all too often being isolated against teams like Boels and Sunweb. The only rider to take the bait and go with Alena was the ever-aggressive Ane Santesteban for Alé, though the Belarusian's move did have the intended effect for Canyon - Boels got nervous about the size of the advantage and started to commit riders to the front when it approached the minute mark. On the penultimate ascent of the final climb, they released Meg to bridge across the now heavily reduced gap, accompanied by Małgorzata Jasińska, the distinctive veteran Pole may now be riding for Movistar but she's spent a large amount of her career on Italian teams, and this kind of combative move is precisely her thing, so they made for a very interesting quartet, and the onus was then on Wiggle, Sunweb and Mitchelton-Scott to do the chasing.
It might not have been a task that the teams took on gleefully, but they did at least take it on with gusto, with Sunweb in particular chasing hard. Having been out front the longest, however, Amialiusik communicated to the team that she wasn't feeling good about taking it from there and so Canyon committed their other resources to the chase behind, reuniting péloton and fugitives with 15km to go. And on the final climb, the Universal Laws of Women's Cycling applied. As we know, these Universal Laws include such self-evident truths as "Rule 231: in any given race, the probability of Emma Johansson finishing either 2nd or 3rd will approach 1" and "Rule 186: on any given downhill, Mara Abbott must lose a minimum of 50% of any advantage gained previously, or add a minimum of 50% of any deficit", and one of these rules is, of course, "if the road goes uphill, Katarzyna Niewiadoma must attack". Far be it from Kasia to contravene any of the Universal Laws, and so when the race arrived at the lower slopes of Orino for the final time, the Pole stamped on the pedals and hit the accelerator, with nobody able to answer to her pace. The nearest to doing so was, in fact, somewhat surprisingly Lucy Kennedy, however a bit like with Stevens a few years ago it may be inexperience in road cycling that harmed her in her attempts to chase down the race leader, as she was swallowed back up by the remainder of the péloton on the descent - though this had been trimmed to a mere 8 riders (9 once the Australian was recaptured) by the pressures of responding to the attack. It was a pretty elite group though - Boels had Chantal Blaak and Karol-Ann Canuel, Mitchelton had Amanda Spratt and, obviously, Kennedy, Canyon had Pauline Ferrand-Prévot and Alena Amialiusik although obviously they were not contributing to any chase and Amialiusik had been in the earlier break regardless, while Marianne Vos, Elisa Longo Borghini and Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig were flying solo for their respective teams. Noticeably absent, however, was defending champion Coryn Rivera, who hadn't been able to handle the climbing pace this season here, and fell into line with the splintered groups that made up a 40-strong péloton by the race end, a minute back from when Kasia crossed the line, taking calculated risks without being reckless on the descent and holding on for a fabulous solo win - I get the feeling given her skillset that much like Emma Pooley, that is going to be the modus operandi for most of her career triumphs - while Blaaki managed to use rainbow power to outsprint Eddy Merckx for the second place finish. To be fair, I don't think the Canyon duo in the chasers will have had much chance in the sprint anyway, but they were too busy celebrating at the end to try to contest it. This is precisely what PFP and Kasia have been brought in for, the two roomed together back at Rabobank and have good rapport, but also because Canyon had that problem of always having the there-or-thereabouts contenders. PFP on her own was something of a coup signing, but she's had a rough couple of years with injuries and as she transitions back to a fuller road calendar I would anticipate them to be able to wring more results out of her especially as Kasia now doesn't have to worry about being completely outnumbered and outgunned in finales the way she has been the last couple of years (which she's then exacerbated by doing way more work than she should in some situations)...
The absence of Anna VDB and the two podiums from two races entered moves Katie Unknown into the overall World Cup lead for her second stint, after picking up the jersey in the Women's Tour last year only to lose it in the Giro shortly after. She has a sizable lead of 100 over Chantal Blaak, with Vos, van der Breggen and Pieters close at hand - Pieters is the only one with a 100% record though, having not raced either of the Italian races. Sofia Bertizzolo took more strong points in the U23 standings to defend that lead, which she holds ahead of Elisa Balsamo, although again the fact we haven't seen too much racing from Dideriksen, Lippert and the like thus far may be a factor in that. Similarly, the team competition looks at this stage to be a straight head to head between Boels and Canyon, but Mitchelton have picked up some strong points so far considering they have not had Annemiek van Vleuten, their biggest points scorer of the last couple of years, at their disposal yet, plus when that run of flatter races comes the presence of Jolien d'Hoore will be a big boost, while Canyon, having lost Lisa Brennauer who was a very good source of rouleur points, will be putting a lot of responsibility for matching those points onto the Barnes sisters, both of whom are very strong, but this is also Alice's first season at a top level team so they may be wary of overburdening her. Alé-Cipollini are currently in a somewhat surprising 3rd overall, though I suspect they won't be able to keep this up all season as essentially the vast majority of their points come from Hosking, Bastianelli and Ensing, and that is likely to remain the case season-round.