Annemiek van Vleuten wins Tour of Flanders

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Ten years after her first victory, Annemiek van Vleuten (Movistar Team) has won her second Tour of Flanders. The European champion attacked from a small group of favourites on the final climb with 14km to go, before extending her gap from seven seconds at the top of the Paterberg to 25 seconds at the finish. 

From the chase group, Lisa Brennauer (Ceratizit-WNT) beat Grace Brown (Team BikeExchange) in the sprint for second place.

“I had been hoping for this for ten years after my 2011 victory, and now it all fell into place. I am very proud, especially for my new team Movistar, the girls worked very hard for me, I was the number-one leader and could finish it off like this … I think we are going to celebrate big tonight,” said a happy Van Vleuten after the race.

“I tried to attack on the Kanarieberg, but there was a headwind, so I stopped again. But it prompted a reaction from the others, making it a good race, and that was to my advantage”, she continued. “I knew that there was nothing after the Paterberg, and I wanted to get to the top first. I had some doubts on the Kwaremont if I should counterattack after Anna’s [van der Breggen. ed.] move, but I thought, wait, wait, it is not on our team to take the initiative. SD Worx was in the group with several riders, and I could profit from that.”

Reliving the final 13 kilometers, Van Vleuten said: “I was so knackered. I really went all out. Eight seconds at the top was not much, I knew I needed more, to get out of sight, because of the long finishing straight.”

How it unfolded

Starting and finishing in Oudenaarde, the 152.4-kilometre race included 13 hellingen, seven of which were cobbled, plus five flatter cobblestone sections.

There were several breakaways in the first half of the race, but they were never more than 50 seconds ahead, and the last one was reeled in after the second climb of the day, the Edelareberg, 63km into the race.

Over the next hellingen, Team SD Worx, Team Jumbo-Visma, Movistar Team, Canyon-SRAM, Alé BTC Ljubljana, and Liv Racing controlled the peloton that became smaller and smaller through attrition, but there were no real attacks until the Berg ten Houte where a move by Leah Thomas (Movistar Team) was neutralised quickly.

On the Kanarieberg, 44km from the finish, Van Vleuten put in a short-lived acceleration. “I tried to attack on the Kanarieberg, but there was a headwind, so I stopped again. But it prompted a reaction from the others, making it a good race, and that was to my advantage,” she explained after the race.

It was then Audrey Cordon-Ragot (Trek-Segafredo) who attacked after the climb and quickly got a gap, extending her advantage over a peloton of about 40 riders to half a minute on the Kruisberg. Team DSM’s attempts to launch a chase with Floortje Mackaij and Liane Lippert were shut down, but Soraya Paladin broke away on the short flat on the Kruisberg/Hotond combination.

Moves by Amy Pieters (Team SD Worx) and Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig (FDJ Nouvelle-Aquitaine Futuroscope) on the Hotond came to nothing, leaving Cordon-Ragot and Paladin ahead of the peloton. They were eventually caught just before the Oude Kwaremont, starting at 18km to go.

World champion Anna van der Breggen (Team SD Worx) pushed the pace on the long, cobbled climb, followed only by Brown, Van Vleuten, Elisa Longo Borghini (Trek-Segafredo), Brennauer, Uttrup Ludwig, Marta Cavalli (FDJ Nouvelle-Aquitaine Futuroscope), and Demi Vollering (Team SD Worx).

Brown accelerated from this group on the way towards the final climb, and Van Vleuten bridged the small gap on her own. The two were reeled in at the bottom of the Paterberg where Van Vleuten took the lead and went all-in, dropping the rest of the group and cresting the top with an eight-second gap.

From there on, she extended her lead on the way to the finish in Oudenaarde, helped by a lack of cooperation in the group behind where riders were either wary of investing energy to bring their rivals back into the race or just unable to push any harder after a long race.

Finishing in fourth place, Longo Borghini took back the lead in the UCI Women’s WorldTour. Emma Norsgaard (Movistar Team) defended her lead in the Women’s WorldTour youth ranking.