For the seventh time in her career and fourth year in a row, Elisa Longo Borghini secured the Italian National Championships road race, breaking away solo to make a more than convincing defence of her title.
Longo Borghini (UAE Team ADQ) seemingly had no difficulty on the hilly 120-kilometre course around Pordenone, comfortably handing the three ascents of the Castello de Caneve (1.2 km at 6.6%, 3.1 km at 4.5%) mid -race before powering away to the finish.
Given sterling support by her teammates, Longo Borghini used the third ascent to the Caneva castle to the finish line in the Bottechia Velodrome. The U23 title went to Eleonora Ciabocco (Picnic PostNL), present in the group of chasers led home by Balsamo, 1:50 back, and making her return to racing after a bad crash and injuries in La Vuelta Femenina when she was leading the BYR competition.
How it unfolded
After an hour's racing and a very fast start, no attacks managed to go clear on the rolling course, even if Noemi Lucrezia Eremita (Born to Win BTC City Ljubljana) and Marta Pavesi (Top Girls-Fassa Bortolo) did their best to put some distance between themselves and the rest of the field. UAE Team ADQ ensured that the move never really gained much of an advantage, as Longo Borghini's position as standout favourite meant her team needed to do all of the spadework, keeping the early breaks under control.
Things began to swing more decisively in the defending champion's favour when a group of some 50 riders, spearheaded by UAE, managed to prise themselves out of the peloton. This was whittled down on the second ascent of the Castello de Caneve, with Longo Borghini in person and her teammate Silvia Persico doing much of the hard work to reduce the group to just 20 units.
27 kilometres from the line, Longo Borghini launched what would prove to be the definitive attack of the race. Led out by Persico, the first attack by Longo Borghini drew a response from Trinca Colonel, then from Letizia Paternoster (Liv AlUla Jayco). But a second attack left Paternoster reeling, and by the summit of the climb, Trinca Colonel was already seven seconds behind.
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The next 26 kilometres essentially boiled down to a lengthy time trial effort by Longo Borghini, with Trinca Colonel oscillating between 20 and 40 seconds behind and the group even further distant. As the race returned to Pordenone again for the closing kilometres, Longo Borghini sat up a little to ensure she did not put herself under too much pressure for the finale, but by then, it was clear she was going to be wearing red, white and green yet again for another year.
Alasdair Fotheringham has been reporting on cycling since 1991. He has covered every Tour de France since 1992 bar one, as well as numerous other bike races of all shapes and sizes, ranging from the Olympic Games in 2008 to the now sadly defunct Subida a Urkiola hill climb in Spain. As well as working for Cyclingnews, he has also written for The Independent, The Guardian, ProCycling, The Express and Reuters.
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