Elisa Longo Borghini (Lidl-Trek) won the Tour of Flanders on Sunday for the second time in her career in a sprint with Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM), who took second, and her teammate Shirin van Anrooij, who rounded ou the podium for third.
Unline the men’s race that saw Mathieu van der Poel power away with 45km to go, the women’s 163km race was action-packed from the start. The race was upended in the first 10km when a crash took out team favorites Marlen Reusser (SD Worx-Protime) and Lizzie Deignan (Lidl-Trek), both who sustained fractures.
It wasn’t long after that the first break of the day formed with Mieke Docx (Lotto Dstny Ladies), Gladys Verhulst-Wild (FDJ-SUEZ), Justine Ghekiere (AG Insurance-Soudal), Elena Pirrone (Roland), and Josie Talbot (Cofidis). This break extended their gap to more than three minutes on the peloton, but was eventually caught with 80km to go.
On the Koppenberg the race was decided for SD Worx-Protime when teammates Lotte Kopecky and Demi Vollering found themselves positioned too far back in the peloton and got caught up in crashes. However, eight riders made it over without incident: Marianne Vos (Visma-Lease a Bike), Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx-Protime), Letizia Paternoster (Liv-AlUla-Jayco), Karlijn Swinkels (UAE Team ADQ), Puck Pieterse (Fenix-Deceuninck), Elisa Longo-Borghini (Lidl-Trek), Silvia Persico (UAE Team ADQ), Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM). These eight riders opened up a gap of 35″ over six chasers, Lotte Kopecky (SD Worx-Protime), Demi Vollering (SD Worx-Protime), Pfeiffer Georgi (DSM-Firmenich-PostNL), Fem van Empel (Visma-Lease a Bike), Lea Curinier (FDJ-Suez), Shirin van Anrooij (Lidl-Trek).
As Vollering and teammate Kopecky began to close the gap to the lead group, attacks came from Elisa Longo-Borghini (Lidl-Trek), Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM), and Puck Pieterse (Femix-Deceuninck). All these attacks were reeled in and as the lead group and chasers were almost about to come together Shirin van Anrooij (Lidl-Trek) launched an attack out of the 2nd group and caught and passed the lead group. In no time, Van Anrooij had a 15″ advantage and with 10km to go it appeared that she might solo to victory as she began to climb the Paterberg. But by the time she reached the top, her lead had been cut to 5″ and she was joined by teammate Elisa Longo-Borghini and Kasia Niewiadome (Canyon-SRAM).
Realizing it was all or nothing with less than 10km to go, the three new leaders went full gas. Behind, Vollering and Kopecky exchanged monster pulls in an effort to bring back the leaders, getting within 18″ at one point with just 3km remaining. The three leaders realized the need to keep the pace high and didn’t play any cat-and-mouse games in the final kilometers. It was only in the final 500m that they slowed a bit before Van Anrooij made the decision to lead out the sprint. Niewiadome gave it everything in the final meters but Longo-Borghini was too strong and won by a good bike length. Marianne Vos (Visma-Lease a Bike) won the sprint for fourth from the chase group followed by Lotte Kopecky (SD Worx-Protime).
Results
https://www.procyclingstats.com/race/ronde-van-vlaanderen-we/2024/result
