Boels Ladies Tour: Van Vleuten seals overall title with time trial victory

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Annemiek van Vleuten (Mitchelton-Scott) confirmed her status as the dominant stage racer of the 2018 season by winning the finishing time trial in the Boels Ladies Tour. Covering the 19.6 kilometre course in exactly 24 minutes and beating Ellen van Dijk (Team Sunweb) by 22 seconds, van Vleuten also takes the overall victory after wearing the orange leader's jersey from day one.

Lucinda Brand (Team Sunweb) overcooked a corner early in the time trial and ended up losing over three minutes, dropping from second overall all the way down to 21st. The overall win and three stages picked up along the way also put van Vleuten above Marianne Vos in the UCI Women's WorldTour ranking where the 35-year-old now holds a practically insurmountable lead with only two events left to come.

Held around Roosendaal in Noord-Brabant, the 19.6 km course was almost completely flat, mostly along the Roosendaalse Vliet waterway. The second rider off the start ramp, Pernille Mathiesen (Team Sunweb), already set a serious benchmark with 26:13 minutes that stood unbeaten for some time. But when Mieke Kröger (Team Virtu Cycling) came to the finish, she practically demolished Mathiesen's mark, cutting 1:24 minutes off the leading time.

Kröger remained in the hot seat for most of the time trial as nobody came close to her time. In the fight for the U23 classification, Marta Cavalli (Valcar PBM) took one second off Jeanne Korevaar (WaowDeals), but as Korevaar had a six-second buffer on the Italian, she defended her white jersey.

Anna van der Breggen (Boels Dolmans) was the fifth to last rider off the start ramp and the first to beat Kröger's time, finishing in 24:32 minutes. But this stood for less than two minutes as the next starter, European time trial champion Ellen van Dijk, took another ten seconds off the clock.

Lucinda Brand had taken bonus seconds on every road stage of the race and started the ITT only 18 seconds down on race leader van Vleuten. But any hopes of a GC upset came to nought when she misjudged a corner, crashing into a traffic sign at the end of the turn. After getting back on her bike, Brand had to change to the spare road bike due to mechanical problems, destroying all prospects of salvaging her race. Without motivation, Brand was caught by van Vleuten shortly after the halfway point and ended up losing over three minutes, dropping to 21st overall.

In the meantime, van Vleuten, wearing the orange jersey of the race leader instead of the accustomed rainbow jersey of world time trial champion, proved how good her form is by taking 22 seconds off van Dijk and winning yet another stage of the Boels Ladies Tour, her third this year in the six-day race.

"I really wanted to do an optimal time trial. That was my big goal for this race, not even the general classification so much. Now that I have won both, I am very happy indeed. It was a good dress rehearsal for the World championships in three weeks," van Vleuten said after the race.

With 306 points added to her total for this week's results, van Vleuten is now the leader of the UCI Women's WorldTour ranking. Though previous leader Marianne Vos (WaowDeals), van der Breggen, or Amanda Spratt (Mitchelton-Scott) could still theoretically leapfrog van Vleuten, neither of these riders is likely to start both of the remaining events in the race series, making van Vleuten's overall victory in the season-long ranking all but certain.

The UCI Women's WorldTour continues with the two-day Madrid Challenge on September 15 and 16.

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