Grace Brown wins Classic Brugge-De Panne Women

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Grace Brown (Team BikeExchange) has won the women's Classic Brugge-De Panne. The Australian attacked out of a 12-rider lead group that formed in a crosswind section and held off the chase of favourite sprinters on the last ten kilometres to the finish.

A few seconds later, Emma Norsgaard (Movistar Team) won the sprint for second place against Jolien D'hoore (Team SD Worx) in third.

"I'm in shock a little bit because on paper this isn't really a race that suits me; very flat and often for the sprinters," Brown said. "I new my only chance was to do an attack and I can't believe that I pulled it off. It's incredible ... my first WorldTour win, as well.

“It was part of our team plan to be there in the echelons. I knew that there would be action there and I was in the move when it split. As soon as we had a group of 13 after the crosswinds, I was outnumbered by other teams, and there were a lot of sprinters in the group, so I knew that I would have to attack at some point. I knew that there was a little technical section, that would be a good point for me to try a bit earlier than the last kilometres. I went there, and it worked.”

How it unfolded

Starting in Brugge, the peloton faced a long 158.8 kilometres – however, the race was entirely flat. The speed wasn’t high on the headwind running west towards De Panne, none of the early escapees ever held a big advantage, and all of them were caught before the finishing circuit. 

The peloton crossed the finish line together to embark on two laps with a total of 90.2 km remaining.

The first part of the circuit was almost due south, giving strong crosswinds from the west in the exposed area De Moeren. Entering this stretch with 80km to go, the race broke up somewhat, but the first group was still large, and most dropped riders were able to get back.

On the final lap, a crash on a narrow road just before De Moeren split the peloton, and a front group of 13 riders emerged at the end of the crosswind section with 32 km to go.

The lead split included many of the main contenders; D’hoore and Amy Pieters (both Team SD Worx), Lauretta Hanson and Chloe Hosking (both Trek-Segafredo), Norsgaard and Aude Biannic (both Movistar Team), Brown, Alice Barnes (Canyon-SRAM), Kirsten Wild, Julie Leth, and Lisa Brennauer (all Ceratizit-WNT), and Elisa Balsamo (Valcar-Travel & Service). Finally, Lotte Kopecky (Liv Racing) had missed the echelon but put in a big effort and bridged to the front.

Team DSM and Ale BTC Ljubljana worked hard to try and manage the gap as both teams' sprinters - Lorena Wiebes (DSM) and Marta Bastianelli (Ale) - missed the split.

Help came from teams Parkhotel Valkenburg and Drops-Le Col s/b TEMPUR that were chasing in the group behind, but despite their work, the gap increased to 45 seconds as the race passed through Veurne with 20km to go. 

The front group then lost Brennauer when she suffered a puncture two kilometres later, and the gap gradually shrunk to just under 30 seconds.

Brown surprised the rest of the group by attacking at the 10-kilometre mark and quickly opened a sizable gap, extending her advantage to 25 seconds in the dunes between Oostduinkerke and Koksijde as the group behind her did not cooperate well.

Brown lost some ground on the run-in to De Panne as Hanson, Pieters, Biannic, and Leth committed to the chase in service of the sprinter teammates, but the Australian held on to a seven-second gap at the finish to win.

Although she didn’t take part in the race, Elisa Longo Borghini (Trek-Segafredo) continues to lead the Women’s WorldTour ranking. Runner-up Emma Norsgaard takes the lead in the Women’s WorldTour youth ranking.