Vos doubles in Huy

DSB Bank's Marianne Vos achieved her second consecutive victory in the Women's Flèche Wallonne yesterday. The Dutch rider was the one with the most juice left over her rivals at the dreaded Mur de Huy and distanced Marta Bastianelli and Judith Arndt (High Road) to second and third places. Vos, who also was second in the Ronde van Drenthe behind Chantal Beltman ten days ago, thus took over the World Cup lead once again.

"I already won this race in 2007, so it really wasn't that much a goal this year than it was last year," she soberly told wielermagazine.com in the finish. "Still, I like that climb and I know I can get out of the saddle pretty well here so I still wanted to do something with that potential."

Vos admitted her positioning in the finale hadn't been perfect, but she still was able to pull it off. "As everything came back together before Huy, I knew it was a question of sprinting to the foot of the last climb," she explained. "I was actually riding a bit too far back, but at the bottom of the ascent I made it onto Arndt's wheel. With 250 metres to go, I made my attack – it was far away, but nobody could follow me."

The victory showed Vos' good form this spring, but the Dutchwoman insisted it took more than that to make it to the top of the podium in Huy. "Of course you can't win here with bad legs," she said. "But you can't compare this course with anything else. It's actually about giving it everything within 400 metres using a ridiculously small gear. This hasn't got anything to do with [the Olympic Games in] Beijing, either."

Speaking of which, Vos re-iterated her desire to do well in the Olympic road race, concentrating on this goal rather than another Word Championship title. "Last year, it was [a season goal], and I also knew I could win it, but this year it just doesn't fit into the programme, as the Olympics are of course the main objective."