Elisa Longo Borghini (Lidl-Trek) won her second Tour of Flanders after her 2015 victory, winning the sprint of three riders ahead of Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM) and Shirin van Anrooij (Lidl-Trek).
Niewiadoma and Longo Borghini attacked from a chase group on the Paterberg and closed the gap to Van Anrooij 12km from the finish line in the outskirts of Oudenaarde, and the three worked together to hold off the five remaining chasers.
On the final kilometre, Van Anrooij led out the group and started the sprint. Niewiadoma came past, but Longo Borghini then passed her to win. Nine seconds later, Marianne Vos (Team Visma-Lease a Bike) took fourth place in a sprint of five.
“I would like to thank my coach, Paolo Slongo, my husband, Jacopo [Mosca], the entire team for the way they supported me today. The girls were really good and the staff in the car were super supportive when I had a crash because of a flat tyre.
"It’s just amazing, Shirin was a motorbike. We can be proud, first and third in a race like this, it’s a huge team performance. And to our chef Mirko, I did it for the crostata,” Longo Borghini said after the finish.
“I let SD Worx do most of the work, and then Jeroen Blijlevens in the team car said: ‘on the Paterberg, you can try to go’. I knew Niewiadoma was really keen to go, and when I turned back, we were just two. I was like, ‘OK, now full gas to the top and I win this’. Shirin was waiting. We know that our strength is in the team, and this was a planned team move,” she explained why she went after her own teammate in the final.
“This is really different. I won with the tricolore on my shoulder, and I’m a more mature woman. I was just a kid when I won back in 2015, now I can realise it more and am more conscious of what I’ve been achieving,” said the Italian champion.
How it unfolded
Crossing 12 hills, seven of them cobbled, and seven flat cobblestone sections over 163 kilometres, the race got even harder when it started to rain right after the start.
On the first cobblestone sector, the Lange Munte, a crash took out Marlen Reusser (SD Worx-Protime), Lizzie Deignan (Lidl-Trek), and Monica Greenwood (Team Coop-Repsol). All three riders had to abandon the race due to their injuries. Deignan was diagnosed to have broken her arm, while Reusser had fractured her jaw.
Justine Ghekiere (AG Insurance-Soudal), Gladys Verhulst-Wild (FDJ-SUEZ), Elena Pirrone (Roland), Josie Talbot (Cofidis), and Mieke Docx (Lotto Dstny Ladies) then formed the break of the day, building an advantage of up to 3:20 minutes. Josie Nelson (DSM-Firmenich PostNL) and Camilla Rånes Bye (Team Coop-Repsol) tried to bridge to them but never got up and eventually gave up.
There were more attacks from the peloton that never got far away, and when Ghekiere went solo from the break on the Kapelleberg with 54km to go, the break was just 15 seconds ahead. Ghekiere was the last escapee to get caught just before the Koppenberg.
Slippery from the rain, the steep cobbled climb was a key moment of the race. Defending champion Lotte Kopecky and Demi Vollering (both SD Worx-Protime) weren’t positioned well coming into the climb and couldn’t follow the best riders while a crash involving Kim Le Court (AG Insurance-Soudal) and Chloé Dygert (Canyon-SRAM) further held up a large part of the peloton.
Puck Pieterse (Fenix-Deceuninck), Vos, Silvia Persico (UAE Team ADQ), Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx-Protime), Longo Borghini, and Letizia Paternoster (Liv-AlUla-Jayco) were first over the top 44km from the finish, with Niewiadoma and Karlijn Swinkels (UAE Team ADQ) following closely behind.
These eight riders formed a front group that worked together until the Oude Kruisberg where Longo Borghini attacked but couldn’t get away. Léa Curinier (FDJ-SUEZ) punctured out of the chase group where Vollering and Van Anrooij then dropped Fem van Empel (Team Visma-Lease a Bike), Pfeiffer Georgi (DSM-Firmenich PostNL), and Kopecky – who had already been struggling on the Taaienberg.
Niewiadoma and Longo Borghini made a move on the Hotond climb but couldn’t get a gap, and with 25km to go, Vollering bridged to the front group. When Van Anrooij came up as well four kilometres later, she immediately attacked the group from behind to go solo.
Swinkels went after her, and with 19km left to race, Pieterse also attacked from the group while Van Anrooij steadily increased her advantage. On the Oude Kwaremont, Pieterse bridged to Swinkels while Kopecky had recovered and was now leading the chase group, ten seconds behind Pieterse and Swinkels and 30 seconds down on Van Anrooij.
On the Paterberg, Pieterse dropped Swinkels but was then herself caught by the chase group led by Niewiadoma. With Longo Borghini on her wheel, the Polish allrounder eked out a small gap on the rest of the group, and the two riders bridged to Van Anrooij after the descent.
The three riders worked together to keep the chase group behind: At the 10-kilometre mark, their advantage on the group behind was only 14 seconds, but this increased to 23 seconds at the flamme rouge.
Van Anrooij took the front of the group and stalled the pace until the 250-metre mark, where she launched the sprint. Niewiadoma accelerated out of her slipstream, but Longo Borghini took the lead with 100 metres to go and won the sprint by almost two bike lengths.
Results
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