Demi Vollering beats Annemiek van Vleuten to Liege-Bastogne-Liege Femmes title

Image 1 of 11

Demi Vollering (Team SD Worx) won the Liège-Bastogne-Liège Femmes, taking the first big classic victory of her career. The 24-year-old beat Annemiek van Vleuten (Movistar Team) and Elisa Longo Borghini (Trek-Segafredo) in the sprint of a group of five.

A sizable group entered the final climb of the day, the Côte de la Roche-aux-Faucons, where Vollering's teammate Anna van der Breggen set a hard pace. Van Vleuten then attacked on the unclassified climb right afterwards, followed by Van der Breggen and Longo Borghini. When Vollering and Katarzyna Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM) got back to this trio at the top of the climb, the final selection was made.

On the descent into Liège, Van der Breggen took to the front to make sure none of the dropped riders could come back and brought the group to the finishing stretch where Vollering was the strongest in the sprint.

Vollering was crying tears of joy in the winner’s interview: “Anna did such a good job, and the whole team, that I could finish it … that’s awesome. I am really grateful that they did it for me, and it is such an amazing team, thanks to the whole team,” she said.

“It was really hard on the climbs. At one moment we were gone with this group, then Vos came back, and it is better to not sprint with her, of course, so I was really happy that it did break again. Anna did a lead-out the last ten kilometres or something, it was awesome. This is a race I really like, two years ago I was third here in my first pro year, and now already I won, it is a dream coming true,” Vollering said.

How it unfolded

It was a somewhat reduced peloton that started the 140.9-kilometre race in Bastogne on Sunday morning as both Team DSM and Parkhotel Valkenburg had had to withdraw due to Covid-19 positives. Ruth Winder (Trek-Segafredo) could not start as a close contact to a Covid-19 positive while defending champion Lizzie Deignan (Trek-Segafredo) was not at full fitness after an unrelated illness and also skipped the race.

Claire Faber (Andy Schleck-CP NVST-Immo Losch) and Silvia Zanardi (BePink) formed the early breakaway. They built a gap of up to three minutes but were caught soon after the first climb, the Côte de Wanne.

Niamh Fisher-Black (Team SD Worx) initiated the next move that led to a group of seven riders that also included Tayler Wiles (Trek-Segafredo), Lucy Kennedy (Team BikeExchange), Anouska Koster (Team Jumbo-Visma), Elise Chabbey (Canyon-SRAM), Leah Thomas (Movistar Team), and Brodie Chapman (FDJ Nouvelle-Aquitaine Futuroscope). When they were caught on the Côte de Desnié, just inside 50 km to go, Fisher-Black attacked again and held on to the bottom of the Côte de La Redoute.

It was now the turn of Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio (Team SD Worx) to attack, and Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig (FDJ Nouvelle-Aquitaine Futuroscope) bridged to her on the climb while Lucinda Brand (Trek-Segafredo) made the connection on the plateau afterwards. Marianne Vos (Team Jumbo-Visma) also tried to bridge to the front but was quickly caught again as more riders came back to the chase group.

Moolman-Pasio, Uttrup Ludwig, and Brand increased their advantage to 30 seconds, but Canyon-SRAM and Movistar Team, in particular, worked hard to reel them in, and a group of over 30 riders started the Côte de la Roche-aux-Faucons, 15 km from the finish.

World champion Van der Breggen set the pace, dropping many riders and having only Vollering, Niewiadoma, Longo Borghini, and Van Vleuten in her wheel at the top of the classified climb. Moolman-Pasio, Vos, and Uttrup Ludwig returned in the short downhill before the unclassified climb that followed, but an acceleration from Van Vleuten brought the group back down to the original five.

In the final ten kilometres, Van der Breggen repaid Vollering’s work in Wednesday’s La Flèche Wallonne by pulling the group to ensure Vos could not come back, and Vollering convincingly won the sprint in Liège against Van Vleuten and Longo Borghini.

With her third place, Longo Borghini regains the lead in the UCI Women’s WorldTour ranking; 15th-placed Maria Novolodskaya (A.R. Monex) defends the lead in the Women’s WorldTour U23 ranking.