Mireia Benito (AG Insurance-Soudal) has followed up her mid-week Nationals time trial win with victory in the road race on Saturday, blasting away from a six-strong lead group to clinch another triumph.
Four times a time trial champion, the 29-year-old Catalan took off early on the final uphill climb in Sabiñanigo to take her first-ever road race gold ahead of Sara Martín and Paula Ostiz (both Movistar).
The race was dominated by a long-range attack by Maite Urteaga (Eulen-Amenabar), finally caught with just four kilometres to go by a chase group of four containing Benito, the two Movistar riders and five-times Spanish National Champion Mavi García (UAE Team ADQ).
Despite making much of the running late on, García could not stop Benito from going clear in the final 400 metres, and the Movistar duo proved equally powerless to keep the national time trial champion from adding a second title in just three days to her palmares.
"I can't believe it, it's been a really chaotic race," Benito said about her first-ever mass start road race win. "I thought it was all decided because there was no collaboration. It was very hard to understand the race dynamics."
"So I decided simply to go for it and I didn't want to leave anything behind. I just wanted to go home with the feeling that I had fought hard. It's a dream come true."
"When I attacked before, I really didn't feel that it was going anywhere, it was a really odd race. But I wanted to try, and then when I was caught, I thought that I was done for. But then I realised everybody was really suffering by that point so I tried again."
How it unfolded
The 129.7-kilometre race was largely defined by the pursuit of long-distance breakaway Urteaga, who defied the WorldTour teams with a move that began on the first of the five lap circuit and which only definitively ended close to the finish in Sabiñanigo, NE Spain.
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On a deceptively difficult course, featuring a never-ending series of undulating climbs across the foothills of the Pyrenees, Urteaga's move effectively saw the chasing peloton shred itself into bits as they tried to chase her down on a blisteringly hot day. And with 40 kilometres left, her advantage of two minutes over a chase group of less than ten riders was still proving tricky to reduce.
With her teammate and top favourite Paula Blasi a DNS because of injury, yet more accelerations by García on a grinding ascent whittled down the chase group to just the UAE Team ADQ rider, defending champion Martín and Ostiz (Movistar) as well as Benito. A fifth rider, Sandra Alonso (Eneicat-Be Call) was sporadically in contact, but visibly struggling to maintain herself in the group and despite the presence of two Movistars, much of the running was made by García, arguably the strongest rider in the race, and Benito.
Benito and García even managed to clip away from the Movistar duo, closing in remorselessly on a by-now flagging Urteaga. But instead Ostiz and Martín managed to reel them in, after which García provided more impetus to catch Urteaga four kilometres from the line.
A holding pattern briefly emerged, and coming into Sabiñanigo, the five leaders even slowed so much Alonso could rejoin them, making a courageous, if futile, attempt to go clear immediately afterwards.
The final uphill 800 metre drag to the line was looming up fast, and when Benito went from distance, it seemed like an overly ambitious move. Instead, neither Blasi nor Martín had enough individual power to bring her back, and García had finally run out of energy as well. That meant Benito had ample margin to celebrate a triumph that owed as much to reading the race correctly and realising her rivals had nothing left to offer as it did to pure strength, raising her arms several bike-lengths ahead of Martín and Blasi, silver and bronze despite their team's advantage in numbers in the winning break.
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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