Emakumeen Bira: Longo Borghini solos to stage and overall victory

Elisa Longo Borghini (Trek-Segafredo) is the winner of the 2019 Emakumeen Bira. She attacked on the last climb of a hard final stage, cresting the top of the climb solo and defending her gap over the final 18 km to the finish.

The chase group including pre-stage leader Amanda Spratt (Mitchelton-Scott), who came close on the final kilometre, but Longo Borghini kept a four-second gap at the finish line. Together with the 10-second time bonus for the stage win, Longo Borghini had enough to make up her 12-second deficit to Spratt and win the overall race by two seconds.

“I calculated a little bit,” said Longo Borghini. The last I heard, I had 14 seconds, plus the time bonus. And I just didn’t care [about the GC], sorry. I have waited two years to win a race again, and I just wanted to celebrate. I had my mum here and wanted to show her that I was happy. My team worked very well the entire week, and I just wanted to give back to them. Looking back, sitting up to celebrate was a bit too risky. But I was just joyful, and luckily, I was safe with two seconds.”

The fourth and final stage of the Emakumeen Bira was the undisputed queen stage with four climbs on 155.8 kilometres starting and finishing in Oñati. Erath (Canyon-SRAM) and Marissa Baks (Biehler Pro Cycling), Anna Plichta (Trek-Segafredo) went on the escape with 120 km to go.

Malgorzata Jasinska (Movistar Team) bridged to Plichta on the first climb, and this duo built a lead of two minutes to the peloton where Mitchelton-Scott was working for the race leader Spratt. Omer Shapira (Canyon-SRAM) went on a solo chase and was joined by Sheyla Gutierrez (Movistar Team) and Nikola Nosková (Bigla) on the long but steady second-category climb to Atagoiti.

At the top, Jasinska and Plichta were 1:05 minutes ahead of the three chasers, with the peloton led by Alé Cipollini at 2:30 minutes. The chasers eventually caught up with the two Poles, and the peloton reduced the gap to 40 seconds at the bottom of the third climb. Gutierrez attacked from the front group and was joined by her teammate Jasinska while the other three escapees were caught by the peloton.

Jasinska and Gutierrez had a 15-second advantage at the top of the climb but were reeled in after the technical descent. Undeterred, Gutierrez launched another attack that was followed by Audrey Cordon-Ragot (Trek-Segafredo) and led to a breakaway of eight riders, also including Cristina Martinez (Bizkaia Durango), Victorie Guilman (FDJ Nouvelle-Aquitaine Futuroscope), Lucy Kennedy (Mitchelton-Scott), Christine Majerus (Boels-Dolmans), Ella Harris (Canyon-SRAM), and Na Ahreum (Alé Cipollini).

This group started the final climb, the eight-kilometre, first-category ascent to Asentzio, with a 40-second lead. Halfway up the climb, Kennedy was called back to the peloton to help with the chase as Mitchelton-Scott had run out of domestiques.

The gap gradually became smaller on the steep second half of the climb, and 1 km from the summit, the break was caught by an elite group including Spratt, Longo Borghini, and Soraya Paladin (Alé Cipollini). When Longo Borghini attacked with 500 metres to go to the top, Spratt briefly tried to follow but could not keep up. Longo Borghini threw herself into the descent and had a 20-second advantage when the road flattened out nine kilometres to go, putting her in the virtual lead.

Annemiek van Vleuten (Mitchelton-Scott) emptied herself working hard in the chase group to bring back Longo Borghini, but the Italian held onto a four-second margin as she sat up to celebrate her first win in two years, taking the overall win two seconds ahead of Spratt and seven seconds ahead of Paladin.

Majerus finished second on the stage, Tayler Wiles (Trek-Segafredo) was third and finished fourth overall. In addition to the white leader’s jersey, Longo Borghini also took home the orange points jersey and the mountain jersey. Ane Santesteban won the green jersey for the best Basque rider, Erath won the blue intermediate sprint jersey, and Évita Muzic (FDJ Nouvelle-Aquitaine Futuroscope) won the pink U23 jersey. With three riders in the top-20, Movistar won the team classification. Van Vleuten continues to lead the UCI Women’s WorldTour ranking.

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