Last season women’s cycling was dominated by SD Worx-Protime, but Elisa Longo Borghini believes Lidl-Trek would have been right alongside them had not injury and illness hampered her and much of her team in 2023 - and the Italian champion's Tour of Flanders win just reinforced that feeling.
“Last year was a very unfortunate time for us. I think if we had not had so much bad luck with injuries and sicknesses all season long, you would have seen the same as in 2024,” said Longo Borghini in her winner’s press conference.
“But yeah, let's say that we’ve been very unlucky and now we are at full potential and we showed what we could do… which I think is pretty good.”
Lidl-Trek may have had a slow start to the 2024 Women's WorldTour season, but have now won three of the last four races, with Elisa Balsamo starting the run at Trofeo Alfredo Binda and Classic Brugge De Panne. Longo Borghini and Shirin van Anrooij also spent time at the head of the race at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, Strade Bianche and Dwars door Vlaanderen, all of which appears to have laid the foundations for a perfectly executed performance at Sunday’s Ronde.
At the three aforementioned races, Lidl-Trek were only undone by the likes of Marianne Vos (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Lotte Kopecky (SD Worx-Protime) outsprinting them to the line after failing to capitalise on their numeric advantage. But on the biggest stage of all at Flanders, their timing was perfect.
Van Anrooij made her big attack with 21km to go as a chasing group rejoined Longo Borghini and the leaders, before maintaining a nearly 15-second gap solo until the foot of the Paterberg when action reignited in the chase group.
“When she [Van Anrooij] came back she was like a bullet down the new Kwaremont,” Longo Borghini said of her Dutch teammate's attack.
“We knew that she was really strong from Wednesday [Dwars door Vlaanderen] and Strade so we were like 'OK, we can play the game In the final with you too and you can always have your chance'.”
The pair have been rooming together while in Belgium this week, with Longo Borghini even showing her younger teammate videos of her triumph in 2015 as the pair talked tactics.
The Italian said “Numbers is strength” in her press conference and the duo embodied this against Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon SRAM) in the final when the pair bridged to Van Anrooij after the Paterberg and dropped the remaining SD Worx stars Kopecky and Demi Vollering.
All three committed but once they had survived until the Oudenaarde final straight, Van Anrooij moved to the front and did the lead out for Longo Borghini, allowing her to slot into the Polish rider’s wheel before launching her effort on the opposite side of the road and taking the victory.
Finding top form again
Not only for the team but also for Longo Borghini individually, Sunday was more than 'just another' victory. Her triumph in Flanders marked a return to her absolutely brilliant best form after an arduous 2023 left “her body done” and her “destroyed” as a rider. She had faced COVID-19, a nasty skin infection and sepsis.
This led the humble Italian to dedicate her 42nd pro win to her support staff and trainer who she has spent much of the last few weeks with at altitude camp on Mount Teide trying to recapture the form that she had at times doubted could be rekindled.
“It is just a victory that I would like to dedicate to my trainer, Paolo Slongo because he was rebuilding up a rider that had been completely destroyed from a season,” Longo Borghini said.
“He was the one that had faith in me, always believing that I could come back and come back strong. Sometimes I called him, telling him I would never come back and he was like 'No don’t worry, you’ll be fine and maybe even stronger than you expect'.”
The Italian champion believed that Slongo would currently be on Mount Teide laughing with the words ‘I told you so’ on his mind, and Longo Borghini couldn’t have been more grateful, knowing that wins like these don’t come around so often.
“Every victory is special for me because nothing is [taken] for granted,” she said. “Neither in cycling nor in life.”
Longo Borghini reflected back on her 2015 victory where she won solo at just 23 years old, admitting that as a more experienced professional, she could appreciate this one significantly more than nine years ago.
“In 2015 I was just a kid,” she said. “I was really not understanding what was happening and now I’m just more conscious of what I just did, especially with my tricolour [National Champion´s] on and it's pretty amazing.”
Longo Borghini gave herself an internal pep-talk as the finale played out for the trio out front, confident she could outkick Niewiadoma to the line after all her practice on training roads.
“In the last 3km, I still knew we had to push quite hard because the gap was really close and we couldn't play the game,” Longo Borghini said. “But in my mind, it was like - Elisa, you know what to do, you’ve been sprinting for so many town signs, so now you feel good. You’re strong, you win it.”
It was also recently revealed that Longo Borghini wasn’t actually supposed to be back at next week’s Paris-Roubaix, despite being the 2022 winner. But a broken arm for Lizzie Deignan after a crash in Sunday's race means the Italian Champion may be called into action for the pavé.
“Well ... that was not on my program, but I’m the first reserve. Lizzie is out and I think probably I’ll be riding,” she said.
“I really have to talk to my team to understand what they want me to do. If they want to send me to Roubaix or not, if they want to do a recon or want to send me home. I have to reschedule everything.”
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