Bronzini wins Drentse 8

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Wiggle-Honda's Giorgia Bronzini scored her first victory of the 2015 season out of a breakaway group in the Molecaten Drentse 8 van Westerveld. The Italian made easy work of Orica-AIS's Valentina Scandolara and Annamiek van Vleuten (Bigla) from the eight-rider group.

The sprint was marred by the crash of Lauren Rowney (Velocio-SRAM), who was trying to come pass Bronzini along the barriers when a specator shot his arm out and caught her bars. The Australian crashed hard breaking her collarbone, and was helped off the course just before the main peloton's arrival 1:45 later.

“I told the girls that I wasn’t feeling so good today, because of my wrist and I have a cold, so I would work for them,” Bronzini said. “We came into the small lap and I was up the front, and there was an attack - the first really serious one - and I jumped [across], and the break had gone!

“I could do nothing, I was in the break!” Bronzini laughed. “I tried to be a little bit smart because my shape is not the best, and I can’t work really hard. I thought that the break would be chased down by the other teams, but it wasn’t. I tried to take my turn, but I didn’t have any power.

“In the end they tried to attack me, but I could follow the moves,” she added. “I was on van Vleuten’s wheel on the last corner, and I gave her a little bit of a gap. I came out with 200 metres to go, and it was okay at the end."

The race consisted of two long laps to 101.7km, and five local laps on a 7.4km circuit, but a lack of the usual strong winds kept the field intact for much of the day. The eight-woman breakaway escaped on the first local lap, with Bronzini, Scandolara and Van Vleuten joined by Loren Rowney (Velocio-SRAM), Willeke Knol (Liv-Plantur), Emilie Moberg (Hitec Products), Alice Arzuffi (Inpa-Sottoli) and Heather Fischer (USA).

The gap to the breakaway rose and fell, climbing to nearly two minutes in the final lap. Arzuffi was distanced in the last part of the final lap, and Van Vleuten tried her luck with an early move, but Bronzini was still the fastest and took the win with apparent ease. She was concerned that she might have caused Rowney's crash in the sprint, but was relieved to later find it was a spectator's fault.

“In the first moments I thought that it maybe was my fault, but my sprint was okay and she had time,” Bronzini explained. “We just saw the video and someone - a spectator - took her handlebar, and that is really crazy; a really crazy thing!”

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