D'Hoore wins Boels Rentals Ronde van Drenthe

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Belgian champion Jolien D'hoore celebrated her 25th birthday in style with victory at the Ronde van Drenthe. The Wiggle-Honda rider jumped from the wheel of her teammate Chloe Hosking to take the win from Amy Pieters (Liv-Plantur) and Ellen van Dijk (Boels Dolmans).

The Ronde van Drenthe is a tough 138-kilometre race, with three major sections of cobbles and three climbs of the VAMberg, one of the stranger hills in the Netherlands - which gets bigger every few years because it’s man-made out of landfill. It’s always unpredictable, and has been won from solo attack, small group, bunch sprint and everything in between.

It looked like it would be another year for the escape artists, as the cobbles in the middle of the race whittled the bunch down and a large crash took out riders including last week’s Strade Bianche winner, Megan Guarnier. 2014 victor Lizzie Armitstead (Boels Dolmans) signalled her intentions, cresting the final two climbs of the VAM at the front and was leading with only the current World ITT Champion, Velocio-SRAM’s Lisa Brennauer for company following the final ascent, before being caught by a select group of 15 with 28 kilometres to go.

When top Dutch sprinter Kirsten Wild (Hitec Products) punctured and had to wait for a wheel on the narrow lanes, it looked as though the winner would come out of this group, dominated by the big teams: four Wiggle Honda riders (Elisa Longo Borghini, Audrey Cordon, Hosking and D'hoore) three each from Boels Dolmans (Armistead, Ellen van Dijk and recent Le Samyn winner Chantal Blaak) and from Velocio-SRAM (Brennauer, Barbara Guarischi and Cyclingnews diarist Tiffany Cromwell) two Rabo-Liv (Roxane Knetemann and Lucinda Brand), and four solo riders, 2009 winner Emma Johansson (ORICA-AIS), Italian Road champion Elena Cecchini (Lotto-Soudal), 2011 World Cup series winner Annemiek van Vleuten (Bigla) and Liv-Plantur’s Pieters.

Longo Borghini, Blaak, Cromwell and Knetemann escaped, and had gained 25 seconds lead at 10km to go, and it seemed as though the script was set – four Classics riders known for their love of attacks and clever racing, with enough team-mates behind to destroy any chase attempts.

But this is bike racing, and it was so clear that something else was going on. Poker playing among the four leaders, with Longo Borghini clearly working for a team-mate behind, meant that not only were they caught by the chasers shortly into the final 7.9km lap, but they were also brought back by the second group, with Alé Cipollini working furiously on the front, and Hitec powering to bring Wild back for a bunch sprint.

While it looked like the game-playing had lost the big teams the race, it turned out for one team, at least, it was all part of the plan. Hosking used all her power to kick early, with team-mate D'hoore right on her wheel, ready to take over and make the win look easy, with Pieters second, and Van Dijk third.

For D'hoore, the win couldn’t have come on a better day, an extra celebration for her 25th birthday. She credits the step up she took last year, which saw her win stages of the Boels Rental Ladies Tour and the BeNe Ladies Tour, and two Track World Cup golds in the omnium, to finally finishing her university degree and being able to focus full-time on cycling. Already 2015 is looking good, winning the first round of the Lotto Cycling Cup, Omloop van het Hageland, and now the first World Cup, while Wiggle Honda are dominating Drenthe, after Giorgia Bronzini won the opening race here, Drentse 8.

After the final Drenthe race, Novilon Eurocup tomorrow, the World Cup will move to Italy for the Trofeo Alfredo Binda on 29th March, before finishing the Classics portion of the season with the Ronde van Vlaanderen on 5th April, and Flèche Wallonne on 29th.

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