In her last Giro Donne victory in 2019, Annemiek van Vleuten, then at Mitchelton-Scott, went solo on the first mountain stage to win by almost three minutes and take the maglia rosa. In 2020, she followed a similar recipe by going solo on the challenging stage 2, but was injured in a crash on stage 7 and had to abandon the race.
Back in Italy after skipping the race last year to prepare for the Tokyo Olympic Games, the 39-year-old Movistar Team rider took the Giro Donne by the horns as “attack is the best defence” and gained minutes on most of her competition. However, she did not finish on her own. This time Mavi García (UAE Team ADQ) followed Van Vleuten all the way to the line, and Marta Cavalli (FDJ Nouvelle-Aquitaine Futuroscope) only lost contact on the final stage 4 climb before Cesena.
The Passo Maniva summit finish on stage 7 was the opportunity for Van Vleuten to gain time and further secure her hold on the maglia rosa. With a five-minute buffer on the rest of the field, she only cared about taking time on García and Cavalli, and this helped the rest of the GC contenders to come back.
Van Vleuten’s first attack with about 3.5 km to go blew the group of favourites apart, but when she saw that García and Cavalli were both on her wheel, the Dutchwoman was reluctant to continue at full speed.
The 39-year-old easily followed moves by Cavalli and García later on the climb and then made another attack herself, briefly gapping her two rivals, but the Spanish champion made it back to Van Vleuten’s wheel with Cavalli in tow, and the momentum was gone.
This enabled fourth-placed Elisa Longo Borghini (Trek-Segafredo), who was riding her own pace up the climb, to return to the group while Juliette Labous (Team DSM) won the stage from the breakaway. White jersey Niamh Fisher-Black (Team SD Worx) and Italian climber Gaia Realini (Isolmant-Premac-Vittoria) also came back, and Fisher-Black, eighth overall before the stage, took charge of the pace to increase her time gain and move up in the general classification, dropping Realini from the group again.
The New Zealander had to pay the price for her efforts as she dropped back when Van Vleuten went for the finish line, but Fisher-Black had achieved her goal and leapfrogged Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig (FDJ Nouvelle-Aquitaine Futuroscope), Amanda Spratt (Team BikeExchange-Jayco) and Silvia Persico (Valcar-Travel & Service) in GC, moving into fifth place.
“I was super careful to pace my effort well. I am still not so confident in my abilities on the long climbs, and we have two more hard days coming," Fisher-Black recounted about the final climb. "So I didn’t follow the attacks straight away but kept my own effort, then I was happy I could come back and finish strong. I wanted to secure my place in the top- ive as much as I could today.”
Including time bonifications, Van Vleuten did gain six seconds on García and 16 seconds on Cavalli, but compared to previous years, her racing felt more calculated, trying to do only what was necessary to win and not leaving everything on the road.
The reason for this approach is the inaugural Tour de France Femmes avec Swift that starts two weeks after the Giro Donne finishes. Van Vleuten is one of very few riders who attempts to be competitive in both races, and she will not want to wear herself out too much in Italy before the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to win the women’s Tour de France.
