The love-hate relationship between Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM) and the Strade Bianche continued. Since its inception in 2015, the 29-year-old has started the race every year, and apart from a DNF in 2020, she has never finished worse than ninth.
However, the top step eluded her again as she missed the podium by inches when she was passed by Demi Vollering (SD Worx-Protime) in the final metres after getting away from the Dutch champion on the Via Santa Caterina climb.
Climbing off her bike on the Piazza del Campo, Niewiadoma collapsed onto the ground in tears before facing the media’s questions. She was at the same time forthright and searching for answers in her interview with Cyclingnews and Sporza.
“It sucks,” Niewiadoma said about her fourth place, the second time she was so close since 2022. She was sad to have missed the podium again in a race she targets every year. Her last podium finish was a third place in 2019, having collected three consecutive runner-up spots in the years before.
“It was a really hard race. The final was very brutal, I feel like I’m just sad because I’m fourth again, you know, and I feel like …,” Niewiadoma trailed off, tears still audible in her voice, before continuing.
“As a team, we rode for a better result, and it’s just frustrating, you know, ending up in the situation where, sometimes, it’s a matter of luck where the attack goes. And then being in a situation where you have to chase.
"I feel that as a team we really rode a brave race, so it’s just sad not being able to finish it off, and also, at the finish I thought I would get third at least, and then Demi passed me just at the finish line, that hurt,” said the Polish rider, putting her emotions into words.
Niewiadoma had made a big attack on the final gravel sector, Le Tolfe, with its climb of up to 18%, that only Vollering and Kopecky could follow. Elisa Longo Borghini and Shirin van Anrooij (both Lidl-Trek) bridged to the front trio shortly after the gravel sector, and it was from this group that the race-winning move by Kopecky and Longo Borghini went.
“In the final, it’s just hard, you just ride, and you don’t have much time to think how hard it is. You’re super-tired, Demi was attacking, and I felt like she was going to be the one going for victory, so I was marking her. Then, just when we got caught, Lotte went straightaway, so it was very hard to respond, she came from behind with speed,” she looked back at the decisive moment of the race.
Niewiadoma is famous for always racing with her heart, attacking in a bid for glory at every opportunity. In hindsight, the outcome may sometimes have been better if she was racing more cautiously. At first sight, the 2024 Strade Bianche is another example of that: up against the duo of Vollering and Kopecky, arguably the two best women's cyclists in the world and the two last winners of the race, wouldn’t it have been smarter to wait for them to make a move?
But such a tactic doesn’t sit right with Niewiadoma. She has tried to race less aggressively in the past, but it didn’t produce results for her. In an in-depth interview with Cyclingnews in 2022, she pointed out that she tried not to second-guess her every racing decision and didn’t want to only react to others’ moves, but shape the race herself.
“If you always think about not wanting to make a mistake, you are cautious whenever you try something new, and it doesn't work,” Niewiadoma said.
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