As Amanda Spratt sat in Australia at the start of a new season, surveying the landscape of the year behind and what was on the horizon for the season ahead, the now rapidly approaching Ardennes Classics once again stood out.
The 2023 season has traversed some rocky terrain for both the Lidl-Trek team and the Australian rider – “unsatisfying I think is the way I’d describe it” said Spratt. Illness played on her season though it was not without some high points and indications that she had well and truly built back from the problems she faced with Iliac artery endofibrosis.
Spratt’s 2023 results included eight podium appearances in the first three months of 2023 and a top ten in the Tour de France, when the Australian all of a sudden had to carry the mantle for the team on the Col du Tourmalet after Elisa Longo Borghini pulled out ahead of the stage while fourth on GC and ended the team's hopes of a GC podium finish.
The Ardennes, before that hadn't exactly yielded the results the 36-year-old Australian and her team were hoping for in 2023, as Demi Vollering delivered a clean sweep for SD Worx. Still it was an aggressive attack-heavy role that Spratt played – despite April delivering a toe infection and multiple rounds of antibiotics – and the Amstel Gold Race on Sunday April 14 should again mark the start of a critical juncture in her season.
“The Ardennes Classics, around that period in April, will be in the next sort of goal where I really want to be in top form,” Spratt told Cyclingnews at the start of the season in Australia, where her run unfortunately finished early due to kidney stones before the Cadel Evans Great Ocean road race.
Since then, however, the 36-year-old has already had one month long block of racing in Europe and after training in Sierra Nevada at altitude with teammate Gaia Realini, started on her second at De Brabantse Pijl. It was a resounding success for Lidl-Trek with Elisa Longo Borghini beating Demi Vollering (SD Worx-Protime) to victory while Spratt, and the bulk of her teammates finished in the reduced peloton behind.
It was the ideal entry to the Ardennes, where first Shirin van Anrooij looks set to be the key card for Sunday's Amstel Gold Race, then Realini, who came third at La Flèche Wallonne last year is bound to be crucial to the team’s plans at the mid-week race. Tour of Flanders and Brabantse winner Longo Borghini – who to the surprise of many sat out Paris-Roubaix Femmes to focus on her goals at the undulating classics later in April – is looking to Liège-Bastogne-Liège, where she came second last year.
Spratt, given the strength of her team options, seems bound for a support role at the races, and a valuable one at that as the rider from New South Wales has in the past shown that when she is in firing form the cluster of events suit her well. In 2018 Spratt made it to the podium of Amstel and Liège and has seven top ten results across the trio of events.
The squad may be packed with stars, but still their team game is strong, so even though their may be plenty of competition for the opportunities, there is still every reason to think that a rider that is performing can also ultimately find their own chance.
“I still think I have room to grow and room to improve, and especially in this new team,” Spratt told Cyclingnews as she looked ahead to the 2024 season and beyond.
The rider, who joined Lidl-Trek in 2023 added: “I still want to keep progressing and trying to be there in finals and get some bigger results for the team and also supporting. In our team, we have so many great riders but not really big egos, which is nice because everyone's willing to support the rider that's the best in the race, or puts their hand up.
“I think that's important. So for sure I want to be there and contributing to wins, winning myself.”
Breaking the Olympic obsession
Spratt's goals, too, carry beyond Lidl-Trek to the national team. The rider for a long time was one of the most likely picks for the Australian team at World Championships and the Olympic Games, not surprisingly given her road race podium places in 2018 and 2019. Now however that role is filled by Grace Brown, a formidable force in the time trial and handy potential prospect in the road race too.
That means with Brown almost a sure inclusion there are only really two spots of the three that Australia is entitled to at the Paris Olympic Games Road Race that are actually up for grabs and plenty of talented riders in the running. The selection period for the Australian team closes near the end of May, so the Ardennes could prove a critical period for delivering performances that could open the way for a spot to race the Classics style Olympic course. Spratt, who has represented the nation in the last three Olympics, however isn’t getting fixated on the once in four year event this time around.
“I'm definitely putting my hand up for it and it's definitely one I'd love to be there. But also, I would say the last couple of Olympics I really obsessed about it, like the ‘Olympics is everything, everything's on the Olympics’ and it's all I'm thinking about all year.”
This time, however, the combination of the course style which makes it not a guaranteed option for either a climber or sprinter, stiff competition for the limited spots and an evolution of the sport so that the big goals of the season extend well beyond the Olympic Games, has seen Spratt keen to embrace a different attitude.
"I think it's going to be people that are in-form, good racers that can think on their feet – which I know I can do well," said Spratt while discussing the type of riders likely to be selected for the race.
"But I think the Classics are going to tell a lot… If I'm good enough, then I'll be on the team and that will be great – and for sure I really want that, it's not that I don't want that, but I'm also being a little bit realistic as well. And if if I'm not good enough then I won't be selected and that's also okay. There are so many other big goals as well in the season now.”
Spratt points to this as a sign of the development in women’s cycling, pointing out the reduced pre-occupation with the Olympic Games is certainly a wider circumstance, given races such as the Tour de France Femmes and beyond now present as big targets, making the Olympic Games less the be-all and end-all goal.
Of course the Olympics is also not the only opportunity to represent Australia this year and with the World Championships road race delivering 2,488m of vertical ascent a climber like Spratt could well be a handy addition to the team for the September race in Zurich.
“They're an hour away from where I live and it looks like quite a tough course so that's something that I'm definitely eyeing off,” said Spratt.
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