Plenty may have changed in women's cycling since the era when Anna van der Breggen spent seven years straight walking away from the Ardennes Classics with at least one win in hand. This April, however, in her second season back from a set-aside retirement, the podium once again looked within reach for the Dutch rider.
Illness had stymied Van der Breggen's run at the three Ardennes races in her first year after returning, in 2025 delivering a DNF at Amstel Gold Race, a DNS at La Flèche Wallonne, which she has won seven times, and an eleventh at the 2025 Liège-Bastogne-Liège. This year, however, it was a far better start for the SD Worx-ProTime rider, with ninth at the opener and then fifth in the mid-week Flèche Wallonne. But then illness once again presented a hurdle.
