After Lorena Wiebes's late-evening disqualification for having raced stage 1 of the Giro d'Italia Women on an underweight bike, the atmosphere in the SD Worx-Protime camp was rather bleak.
However, 'the show must go on', and the team decided to support Wiebes's usual lead-out woman, Barbara Guarischi, for a result on stage 2. The 35-year-old Italian finished fifth in the bunch sprint in Caorle.
"It was a struggle to get going today. None of us are feeling well; to be honest, we cried a lot. It wasn't easy," Guarischi said after the stage.
The team had Guarischi and Femke Gerritse as possible cards for a sprint finish and decided to put its weight behind Guarischi over her own reservations.
Ever since SD Worx signed Guarischi for the 2023 season as a lead-out rider for Wiebes, the Italian has almost exclusively performed that role.
Her only two victories since were a 2023 Thüringen-Rundfart stage when Wiebes did not come past Guarischi in a technical finish to reward her and a stage of the 2024 Simac Ladies Tour she won from a breakaway.
"The girls decided I would be the sprinter for today," Guarischi said.
"I had said this morning that I didn't feel up to it. This role doesn't belong to me anymore. Whenever I think about a sprint, I always think about Lorena right behind me.
"I no longer feel like a sprinter capable of winning myself. But the girls, and Danny [Stam, SD Worx DS] wanted to give me this opportunity, not so much for the chance of winning, but as a symbolic gesture," Guarischi explained.
With the decision made, the stage then went pretty much as expected. Without the overwhelming favourite, SD Worx-Protime had less work to do, and Guarischi surfed the other team's wheels in the final.
In the end, she placed fifth as race leader Elisa Balsamo sped to her second win in two days ahead of Lara Gillespie and Chiara Consonni.
"It was calmer than yesterday. We went up the climb, the Ca' del Poggio, pretty fast, and then there was a lot of headwind in the final," she said.
"The last 5km were very fast, but all in all, it went okay. I did everything I could, but Lorena was definitely missing behind me. Had I had Lorena in my wheel, we would have been perfect, but today, there was nobody."
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