Fenix-Deceuninck's Millie Couzens sprinted to road race victory in the British road championships, beating out an elite selection of four WorldTour riders to claim her first pro victory, and a national title with it.
She beat three-time champion Pfeiffer Georgi (Picnic PostNL) into second, denying Georgi what would have been a third consecutive title, whilst Anna Henderson (Lidl-Trek) took another nationals podium in third. Josie Nelson rounded out the group in fourth after leading out for her teammate Georgi.
Still only 21, Couzens is also the U23 champion, and adds the elite road race title to the U23 TT win she took earlier in the week.
“Nationals is always quite a hard race to play tactically, everyone’s a little isolated and no one wants to commit too much. There was a point when the break had quite a big gap and I was worried, but luckily I had help from a few other teams and Flora [Perkins] to help control it a little bit," Couzens said.
"I’m so grateful for Flora, without her I don’t think we were going to bring them back. I’m so happy, it’s not the way I thought it was going to go, so it’s a good week.”
The rainy race in Aberystwyth came down to a four-rider group after a long day of chasing, splits and attacks. The day started with a large breakaway of mainly Continental riders going up the road, getting a gap of three and a half minutes, and it was a long process to bring that back.
One of the better-represented teams in the race, Picnic PostNL sent Becky Storrie to bridge the gap, which she eventually did. In the last few laps, the break really began to whittle down, until eventually the leaders were just Storrie and Jess Roberts (Spectra Racing).
However, the pair only had a small gap at this point, and were being furiously chased by a small but strong remainder of the peloton, mainly led by the efforts of Henderson and Fenix-Deceuninck with Flora Perkins.
Storrie and Roberts were eventually caught with around 20km to go, just at the start of the final lap, and as the attrition and climbing wore on, the main group dropped the stragglers to become just four: Couzens, Henderson, Nelson and Georgi.
A large chase group was only less than a minute behind, but despite the presence of riders like Cat Ferguson (Movistar) and Zoë Bäckstedt (Canyon-SRAM zondacrypto), they couldn't catch the leaders, leaving the quartet to contest the win.
Georgi looked like the favourite for another win, given her sprinting ability and the presence of a teammate, but in the end, the up-and-coming Couzens was just too strong and fast, opening up first and holding Georgi and Henderson off all the way to the line.
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