Marlen Reusser (Team SD Worx) won the women's Gent-Wevelgem with a 40-kilometre solo breakaway to win by more than two minutes in rain-soaked Wevelgem.
The Swiss rider sneaked away on the second ascent of the Baneberg when teams were still organising themselves after a mass crash and quickly increased her gap.
Cresting the Kemmelberg over a minute ahead of the chasers, Reusser kept adding to her advantage and passed through Ypres with over two minutes in hand.
Reusser took a wrong turn five kilometres from the finish but quickly turned around and was back on course to take her biggest victory yet.
Megan Jastrab (Team DSM) was part of an attack that was caught on the finishing straight but still won the sprint for second place, with Maike van der Duin (Canyon-SRAM) completing the podium.
“I didn’t attack; I thought, maybe we can make a selection or a small group, and there was just nobody on my wheel. And then I thought, let’s try a bit,” said Reusser of her early winning move.
“We have such a strong team, so at one point, we needed to start to play the game. I was okay with that. But for sure, I was thinking, ‘it’s a long way to the finish line’,” the 31-year-old continued.
Looking back at her brief detour, Reusser said, “I didn’t see the guys showing the way. I went straight, and it was wrong ... that was not so good. I was not concentrating. I didn’t panic, but I was a little bit angry. I had the feeling that they didn’t show well that we turn.”
How it unfolded
Like the men’s race before, the women’s race was held in atrocious conditions as it rained almost the whole day. Pien Limpens (Parkhotel Valkenburg) went on a solo break very early in the 162.5-kilometre race but was caught after 30km.
De Moeren that split Brugge-De Panne on Thursday did not bring about any echelons this time, but there were several crashes on the wet and narrow roads as the race turned south towards the hills around the Kemmelberg. Reusser herself went down in the turn atop the Baneberg, the second climb of the day, but quickly returned to the peloton.
Lotte Kopecky (Team SD Worx) led the race up the Kemmelberg and got a gap on the rest together with Katarzyna Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM) and Anna Henderson (Team Jumbo-Visma). With 50 km left to race, however, they did not push on.
A peloton of 40-50 riders had come back together 44km from the line when a rider got her front wheel caught in a gap in the road surface, causing a mass crash that took down half of the peloton.
Reusser then accelerated away, starting her inadvertent solo. In the confusion after the crash, none of the other teams got a chase organised in time to close her down, and the Swiss time trial specialist started the second and final ascent of the Kemmelberg a whole minute ahead and added another couple of seconds to that on the climb.
The peloton slowly reformed after the Kemmelberg but still couldn’t get together to chase for real, with Reusser’s teammates Majerus, Kopecky, and Wiebes running interference. As Reusser passed through Ypres with a two-minute gap, it was all but clear that she would win.
In the peloton, Shari Bossuyt (Canyon-SRAM) made a move 18km from the finish that led to a group of seven, also including Pfeiffer Georgi (Team DSM), Henderson, Elinor Barker (Uno-X Pro Cycling Team), Majerus, Shirin van Anrooij (Trek-Segafredo), and Eugenia Bujak (UAE Team ADQ).
This group was joined by Jastrab and Ruby Roseman-Gannon (Team Jayco-AlUla) with about 8km to go and looked to be sprinting for second place but was caught by the chasing peloton on the finishing straight. Jastrab managed to stay ahead while Van der Duin just edged out Karlijn Swinkels (Team Jumbo-Visma) for third place, 2:42 minutes after Reusser had crossed the line.
Lukas Knöfler started working in cycling communications in 2013 and has seen the inside of the scene from many angles. Having worked as press officer for teams and races and written for several online and print publications, he has been Cyclingnews’ Women’s WorldTour correspondent since 2018.
