Pfeiffer Georgi (Team DSM) used a late attack to win the women's edition of the 2023 Classic Brugge-De Panne. She rode solo across the line with 1:10 to spare and celebrate her first Women’s WorldTour victory.
Elisa Balsamo (Trek-Segafredo) outsprinted Lorena Wiebes (Team SD Worx) for second place as the pair completed the podium from a group of five riders.
A sprinter's delight, the Classic Brugge-De Panne promises a wide-open showdown among the top cobbled classic sprinters in the women's peloton, midweek on March 23.
During that month of racing, SD Worx has been the dominant team, with Lotte Kopecky, Demi Vollering and Lorena Wiebes coming together in winning fashion.
However, Trek-Segafredo rider Shirin van Anrooij's victory at Trofeo Alfredo Binda, Canyon-SRAM rider Maike van der Duin's third at Drenthe and Fenix-Deceuninck rider Puck Pieterse's fifth at Strade Bianche shows that the younger riders in the peloton are emerging among the top talent of this season.
Classic Brugge-De Panne Women 2023 Information
The 2023 Classic Brugge-De Panne marks the fifth time the women’s peloton will line up in northern Flanders for the one-day WorldTour event. The Belgian event took root in 1977 as a three-day stage race for men. It then added the Women’s WorldTour race in 2018, the same year transforming the men’s contest to a one-day race as well. The men race a day before the women.
Last year Elisa Balsamo (Trek-Segafredo) won Classic Brugge-De Panne while wearing the rainbow stripes, having finished fifth the year before. On her wheel for second place was 2020 winner Lorena Wiebes – then with Team DSM – who rode the final 15km with a broken spoke.
In a big step for the women’s race last year, organisers increased the prize money to be equal with the men’s, offering the women’s field a total prize purse of €40,000. Classic Brugge-De Panne serves as the mid-week lead-up to Gent-Wevelgem.
Join Cyclingnews' live coverage of the 2023 Classic Brugge-De Panne Women with race reports, results, photo galleries, news and race analysis.
Classic Brugge-De Panne Women 2023 course
(Image credit: Classic Brugge-De Panne Women 2023)
This is a race that is well-suited to the sprinters. The Classic Brugge-De Panne route begins in Brugge and passes through Leeuw, Koekelare and Schoorbakke, and then culminates with two finishing circuits in De Panne and a new finish line in Zeelaan. It is also traditionally one of the longest races, with the 2023 route reaching 163km.
Classic Brugge-De Panne Women Contenders
In the five previous editions of Classic Brugge-De Panne, four have been won in a bunch sprint while only one, Grace Brown in 2021, has been won in a hard-fought breakaway. For this reason, Cyclingnews highlights five sprinters to watch at the 2023 Classic Brugge-De Panne.
Italian Champion Elisa Balsamo will line up as the defending champion in Brugge. She is slowly getting closer to an early-season WorldTour win after finishing fourth at Ronde van Drenthe and second at Trofeo Alfredo Binda, behind her own Trek-Segafredo teammate Shirin van Anrooij. Her target is to cap off her spring campaign at the Tour of Flanders before heading home to Italy to graduate in modern literature in Turin.
Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx) is also a former winner, and it is hard to believe that she or her powerful squad can be beaten in a race that seems almost perfectly designed to suit her abilities as a pure sprinter. She will also have at her disposal the dream lead-out team of Barbara Guarischi, Lonneke Uneken and Christine Majerus.
Chiara Consonni might be the dark horse sprinter on UAE Team ADQ. Many will look to the experienced Marta Bastianelli as the team's main sprinter, and rightfully so, with a palmares as long as hers, but Consonni is a new signing on the squad and one of the fastest riders in the field. Together with Laura Tomasi, Eleonora Camilla Gasparrini, Anna Trevisi and Bastianelli, they have a number of sprint options.
Charlotte Kool will be Team DSM's top sprinter, but even though the Dutch rider had a great start to the season at the UAE Tour, she hasn't raced since Omloop Het Nieuwsblad. Perhaps saving her top form for the cobbled Classics, she is set to start De Panne, Gent-Wevelgem and then Paris-Roubaix, so watch for her to shine this week.
Lotta Henttala is the lead sprinter at second-tier team AG Insurance-Soudal-QuickStep, and after a strong comeback to cycling this year with second places in stages at Valenciana and a pair of sixth places at Drenthe and Nokere Koerse, one gets the sense that she is on the cusp of a big victory.
