Anna van der Breggen wins GP Ciudad de Eibar

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World champion Anna van der Breggen (Team SD Worx) won the Gran Premio Ciudad de Eibar on Sunday. 

The race came down to the well-known final climb to the Santuario de Arrate and, after several attacks by Annemiek van Vleuten (Movistar Team), Van der Breggen counterattacked and quickly distanced both Van Vleuten and Elisa Longo Borghini (Trek-Segafredo) before soloing to the finish.

Van Vleuten finished second while Longo Borghini came in third.

Held as a non-UCI race in 2018 and 2019 and cancelled last year, the third edition of the race welcomed a top-quality peloton, including seven Women’s WorldTeams. In the rain, the riders had to negotiate three climbs over 119.4 kilometres, culminating in the steep Alto Usartza, cresting 2.5 km from the finish at the Santuario de Arrate.

Despite a number of attacks early on, the peloton stayed together until reaching the first climb of the race, the third-category Alto Udana, after 27 kilometres. A break of nine riders got away on the climb but was reeled in soon afterwards, and a group of 10 riders eventually got away.

Sheyla Gutiérrez (Movistar Team), Laura Tomasi (Alé BTC Ljubljana), Hannah Barnes (Canyon-SRAM), Clara Copponi (FDJ Nouvelle-Aquitaine Futuroscope), Arianna Fidanza (Team BikeExchange), Karol-Ann Canuel (Team SD Worx), Trixi Worrack (Trek-Segafredo), Gladys Verhulst (Team Arkéa), Laura Asencio (Ceratizit-WNT), and Vita Heine (Massi-Tactic) built an advantage of more than three minutes on the downhill towards the second climb of the day, the third-category Alto Itziar, topping 33km from the finish.

On the climb, Katrine Aalerud (Movistar Team) made a short-lived move from the peloton, and the gap to the break gradually shrunk to just over a minute with 19km to go when an attack from the peloton by Agnieta Francke (Team Farto-BTC) initiated a chase group of five riders.

The peloton backed off for a while, but when the chase group reached the front at the 10km-to-go mark, the favourites’ teams had reduced the gap to only 15 seconds. A last attack by Copponi and Verhulst only delayed the inevitable, and all escapees were reeled in 8km from the line, just before the start of the final climb, rising at an average of 8.8 percent over 4.3 kilometres, often far exceeding ten per cent.

Aalerud set the pace early on, preparing the ground for her team leader Van Vleuten, who soon launched her attack, shooting out from the peloton with 6km to go. Only Van der Breggen and Longo Borghini could stay on Van Vleuten’s wheel; Lucinda Brand (Trek-Segafredo) tried to bridge, but soon had to give up.

However, as the three favourites could not agree to work together, a group of eight riders slowly edged its way back, leading to a group of 11 riders. But right away, another attack by Van Vleuten re-established the previous situation. On the final kilometre of the climb, another attack by Van Vleuten meant that Longo Borghini had to leave a small gap, but when Van der Breggen counterattacked, Van Vleuten herself had to let go.

Van der Breggen defended her lead on the false flat and downhill towards the finish line, winning the GP Ciudad de Eibar 15 seconds ahead of Van Vleuten and 42 seconds ahead of Longo Borghini. 

1:05 minutes behind the winner, Brand won the sprint of a small group for fourth place.