Giro Rosa: Van Vleuten seals overall victory

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Annemiek van Vleuten (Mitchelton-Scott) showed that she was a level above the rest by winning her third stage of this Giro Rosa. The maglia rosa soloed to the finish of stage 10 after attacking in the last kilometre of the category 1 climb with 10 kilometres to go. Lucinda Brand (Team Sunweb) beat Katarzyna Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM) in a group sprint for second place.

Van Vleuten won the overall classification with a four-minute advantage to runner-up Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio (Cervélo-Bigla). Amanda Spratt (also Mitchelton-Scott) rounded off the podium and also took the green jersey for the best climber while van Vleuten won the cyclamen points jersey due to her three stage wins.

Sofia Bertizzolo (Astana Women's Team) took home the white jersey for the best U23 rider while the blue jersey for the best-placed Italian went to Elisa Longo Borghini (Wiggle High5).

In the UCI Women's WorldTour ranking, Amanda Spratt reduced the gap to Anna van der Breggen (Boels Dolmans) to only 14 points. The Dutch rider did not participate in the Giro Rosa, instead opting for a mountain bike stint, and just keeps the purple leader's jersey on her shoulders. Bertizzolo continues to lead the U23 ranking.

How it happened

Stage 10 started and finished in Cividale del Friuli and had a length of 120.3 km. The route contained two laps of a 29-kilometre circuit west of the city before going east, up and down the Natisone valley twice, and finally over the category 1 climb to San Leonardo. After a fast, technical descent, the finish line was in the centre of Cividale del Friuli.

The race started fast as teams who had not yet won a stage were eager to get into the break of the day that was considered likely to stay away. Danielle Christmas (Bizkaia Durango-Euskadi Murias), Carmela Cipriani (Conceria Zabri-Fanini), and Anna Ceoloni (S.C. Michela Fanini) initiated a move that eventually turned into a breakaway of 13 riders – the other ten were world champion Chantal Blaak (Boels Dolmans), Chloe Hosking (Alé Cipollini), Katia Ragusa (BePink), Elena Cecchini (Canyon-SRAM), Sheyla Gutiérrez (Cylance), Alice Gasparini (Eurotarget-Bianchi-Vitasana), Malgorzata Jasinska (Movistar Team), Juliette Labous (Team Sunweb), Eva Buurman (Trek-Drops), and Jeanne Korevaar (WaowDeals).

Most of the big teams were represented up front, but Cervélo-Bigla had missed the move and put in a big effort to bring the group back. Because of this, the gap never went above a minute for almost an hour as the white and blue team chased hard in the peloton and had first Lotta Lepistö, then Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig who was sixth-placed overall try to bridge to the front on their own.

The committed chase led to a whole 46.7 km being covered in the first hour of racing, though by that time the break had built a gap of 1:34 minutes. Passing through the finish in Cividale after 58 km, their advantage was two minutes, and it grew to three minutes on the Natisone laps.

Lisa De Ranieri (Aromitalia Vaiano) tried a solo chase for a short while, but did not get anywhere. This was not true for former world time trial champion Ellen van Dijk (Team Sunweb) who jumped from the peloton with just over 30 km to go and soon trailed the break by less than two minutes. The peloton also took up the chase and caught van Dijk with 18 km to go, the gap to the breakaway was still 1:40 minutes.

The escapees tried to rest themselves before the upcoming climb, but this quickly backfired as the peloton continued to chase hard and reduced the gap to only 30 seconds at the bottom of the climb. Labous and Jasinska stayed in front until about halfway up the steeper first part of the ascent and were then caught by a group of ten riders containing almost the entire overall top-ten. This group was whittled down further to only seven riders: Van Vleuten, Megan Guarnier (Boels Dolmans), Niewiadoma, Moolman-Pasio, Uttrup Ludwig, Lucinda Brand (Team Sunweb), and Margarita Victoria García (Movistar Team).

On the last kilometre of the climb, pink jersey van Vleuten attacked to split the group, and she quickly opened a 40-second gap on Moolman-Pasio and Spratt, with the rest even further behind. The race leader took no excessive risks on the descent, but raced all-out on the last kilometres into Cividale and reached the finish solo to celebrate her third stage win of the ten-day race. 23 seconds later, a group of eight riders sprinted for second place, with Brand beating Niewiadoma and Guarnier.

Having taken more time on her rivals on the final stage, van Vleuten finished the 980-kilometre race 4:12 minutes ahead of runner-up Moolman-Pasio and 6:30 minutes ahead of her teammate Spratt in third place.

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