UAE Team ADQ entered stage 3 of the Santos Women's Tour Down Under as the clear team to watch, their strength in numbers clear in a final stage which included a double ascent of the tough Corkscrew Road climb within the closing 30 kilometres.
As the road went up, the squad dominated at the front of the race just as expected, ultimately ending up with a trio of Mavi García, Dominika Włodarczyk and Paula Blasi blasting up the final climb. However, there was one problem, and it was a big one.
The rider who had managed to join them out the front was the clearly in-form favourite, Noemi Rüegg (EF Education-Oatly).
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Despite the odds being stacked against the defending champion, the rider who wore number 1 calmly and capably tackled being outnumbered and walked away with another victory at the South Australian Women's WorldTour opener, leaving the UAE Team ADQ trio with three of the top four spots, but not the one they really wanted. It was clear by the anguished faces of the riders afterwards how much the miss hurt.
"Our team fights to win, and then it's losing," UAE Team ADQ sports director Michel Cornelisse told reporters in the team area after the finish. "Not nice, but also we can keep our head up – we did everything for it."
On the first climb, García and Włodarczyk were out front with Sarah Van Dam (Visma-Lease a Bike), while Rüegg's teammate, world champion Magdeleine Vallieres, led the chase to pull the defending champion back into contention. In the meantime, Włodarczyk went on the attack, getting the gap on Van Dam and García, who were then swept up by the chasers.
Then, on the second climb, Rüegg was the one who closed the gap to Włodarczyk, though she did it with Blasi and García on her wheel, leaving the quartet at the head of the race.
The riders from UAE Team ADQ put the pressure on the EF Education-Oatly rider through the final climb, but there was no budging the 24-year-old, who unlocked some more power now that she was back in the hunt for victory. Rüegg was far from intimidated by being outnumbered; in fact, she labelled it a "perfect scenario."
When speaking with Cyclingnews before the stage, Cornelisse had flagged, when asked about the potential role of that last descent to the line, that while the climbs were ideal for the squad, "for us, it would be better, of course, to finish uphill, but it is like it is".
The team knew they were up against it once they crested the final climb at 5.8km to go, with Rüegg still on the wheel. They tried repeated attacks but to no avail, with the terrain working against them.
"To be honest, it was really, really hard, because on the downhill, you are already going super fast, so trying to gain speed is really hard," Blasi told reporters after heading to the podium to accept her Queen of the Mountain jersey.
"So, yeah, you could pass her, but for her it was really easy to get into your wheel."
That meant they came toward the last 500 metres with the strong sprinter still firmly attached and then, said Blasi, misunderstood each other on the lead-in, leaving Rüegg to make her move. The EF Education-Oatly rider bolted at around 200m to go, coming around Blasi and continuing without anyone on her wheel, even stretching out a one-second gap on the line.
"They had to play it smarter in the final, of course," said Cornelisse when asked what lessons could be learned, adding that there were also other small mistakes.
"We played the game, and it was not good. We lost, but we fought for it."
A debrief is on the way for the squad. "We will, just for sure, review everything and try to find further mistakes and improve for the next time," said Blasi.
Still, despite the evident disappointment, one thing that neither Blasi nor Cornelisse were overlooking was that they walked away from the first Women's WorldTour race of the season with García, Blasi and Włodarczyk in second, third and fourth place on both the final stage and overall standings.
What's more, the result came in the early-season race where riders are still getting used to shifts in the team, with both García and Cornelisse being new additions.
"When you see the classification, you just think if we got three riders in the top four, for sure, we could have tried to win. But I can say I'm quite confident the wins will come. We showed we are the strongest team because in the final, with three and one – three from the same team, that is usually not the normal thing," said Blasi of the squad, which also walked away with the team classification.
"We showed up, and it's just a matter of time that things will work out."
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