Annemiek van Vleuten wins Liège-Bastogne-Liège Femmes

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Annemiek van Vleuten (Movistar Team) soloed to victory at Liège-Bastogne-Liège Femmes to claim the race for the second time in her career. With her attack on the Côte de La Redoute, the 39-year-old Dutchwomen caught the breakaway, where only Marlen Reusser (Team SD Worx) could stay on her wheel. With the chase group coming ever closer, Van Vleuten sat up again after eight kilometres.

Grace Brown (FDJ Nouvelle-Aquitaine Futuroscope) counterattacked, but Van Vleuten made her final move on the Côte de la Roche-aux-Faucons where she dropped everyone and went past Brown to go solo and increased her advantage on the run-in to Liège. She came home 43 seconds ahead of a group of five, where Brown beat Demi Vollering (Team SD Worx) in the sprint for second place.

“To have the confidence today to go all-out twice and have it work out, that’s the best. It could have been an option to go all-out only on the Roche-aux-Faucons. But it is a new final, you don’t have the Saint-Nicolas anymore, and I know that I have better chances when I go all-out twice. It’s like with good wine, the strength also comes with age, and the more efforts I make, the more chances I have to break away,” said Van Vleuten after the race.

Although nobody could follow her on the climbs, Van Vleuten had to pedal hard into a headwind all the way to the finish line to keep the chasers behind her

“I knew already this morning that it would be hard for a solo breakaway because if they start to chase and work together, they have an advantage with the wind and would catch me. There was just one option, aero, time trial mode, and give everything,” she said.

How it unfolded

Starting in the spring sunshine of Bastogne, the women’s peloton faced seven categorised climbs on the 142.1-kilometre course to Liège. After a breakaway of four had been caught on the Côte de la Haute-Levée halfway through the race, eight riders took off from the peloton.

Reusser, Sara Martín (Movistar Team), Leah Thomas (Trek-Segafredo), Soraya Paladin (Canyon-SRAM), Évita Muzic (FDJ Nouvelle-Aquitaine Futuroscope), Amanda Spratt (Team BikeExchange-Jayco), Leah Kirchmann (Team DSM), and Clara Honsinger (EF Education-TIBCO-SVB) built an advantage of up to 1:18 minutes, but the work of UAE Team ADQ reduced the gap to 45 seconds at the bottom of the Côte de La Redoute.

Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio (Team SD Worx) set a hard pace on the lower slopes with Van Vleuten in her wheel, closing the gap further. Van Vleuten’s attack a kilometre from the top of La Redoute then blew apart what was left of the peloton, and when she flew past the breakaway, only Reusser could stay on the Dutch veteran’s wheel.

Reusser never took turns as she had Vollering and Moolman-Pasio in the group just behind where Thomas and Muzic did most of the chase work, and eventually Van Vleuten decided to sit up and let the chasers come up.

The counterattack of Pauliena Rooijakkers (Canyon-SRAM) was neutralised by Moolman-Pasio, but Brown then got away. With no real cooperation in the group behind, the Australian started the Côte de la Roche-aux-Faucon with a 20-second advantage.

However, Van Vleuten’s final attack quickly closed this gap, and Brown could not follow the 39-year-old’s pace on the steep climb. Brown, her teammate Marta Cavalli, Vollering, and Moolman-Pasio formed the group behind Van Vleuten on the final kilometres to Liège and kept the gap below 20 seconds for a good while.

However, they never came any closer than that and eventually conceded the victory, focussing on the sprint for second place instead. 43 seconds after Van Vleuten had crossed the line, Moolman-Pasio started a long sprint but was passed by Brown and Vollering just before the finish.

With the spring Classics finished, Van Vleuten is now third in the UCI Women’s WorldTour ranking behind Lotte Kopecky (Team SD Worx) and Elisa Balsamo (Trek-Segafredo) while 16th-placed Shirin van Anrooij (Trek-Segafredo) extended her lead in the U23 ranking.