For a second year Australia’s Mitchelton-Scott has towered over its rivals at the biggest race in women’s cycling, finishing first and third overall. Team leader, Annemiek van Vleuten, defended her title by quickly amassing an unassailable lead in the mountains, while Australian teammate Amanda Spratt took a late opportunity to fight her way onto the prestigious overall podium of the ten-day Giro Rosa. We take a look at those pivotal moments that led to the team once again dominating the only Grand Tour in women’s cycling.
A messy time trial hero
The Giro Rosa opened with an 18 kilometre ascent heavy team time trial. It was the perfect terrain for three of Mitchelton Scott’s team of six, van Vleuten, Spratt and talented climbing domestique Lucy Kennedy. The catch was that it was actually the time of the fourth rider over the line that counted toward the time for the overall.
New recruit Grace Brown, who is Australian time-trial champion, was an obvious fourth but winning a national title on the flat roads around Ballarat was a far cry from holding the wheels of Mitchelton-Scott’s well-prepared climbing trio. Particularly when that trio included the world’s very best time trial rider on a mission to win another pink jersey.
“We took a risk early on, we went a bit hard up the first climb and Grace was left as our fourth rider then and she was absolutely amazing today,” said Spratt after the stage. “She was our hero today, suffering and we were just encouraging her and trying to get her through to the finish.”
And get through she did, but not without making a bit of a mess of her shiny time trial bike along the way.
When you finish a TTT with a little spew on your bike, you know you’ve given your all 🤮. That was proper suffering! But glad to do it for my @MitcheltonSCOTT teammates https://t.co/yYRjbNrlaf
— Grace Brown (@GLBrown321) July 5, 2019
Mitchelton-Scott finished fourth, 53 seconds down on the race winners Canyon-SRAM, but still close to most key rivals. That first stage was never going to win Mitchelton-Scott the Italian tour, but had Brown not dug so deep it could have been lost before it even really got started.
Introducing “the alien”
Van Vleuten and Spratt steadily worked their way up the general classification through the hilly early stages of the tour, but were both sitting outside the top five until Stage 5 when there was a mountain finish to truly shake up the overall classification.
Kennedy helped splinter the peloton so the key contenders arrived at the final climb with a sting in the legs and few teammates. So when van Vleuten leapt off the front with a ferociously quick attack as soon as the final climb began there seemed to be a sense among her rivals that resistance was futile. Italian favourite Elisa Longo Borghini described it as “the alien” leaving, while Boels Dolmans, the team of two-time winner Anna van der Breggen, said there simply “wasn’t a response possible”.
By the end of the ten kilometre climb the world time trial champion had secured her first stage victory of the race, the leader’s pink jersey and a buffer of a staggering two minutes and 16 seconds to her nearest rival on the general classification.
Time on her side
The big question on Stage 6 was not if van Vleuten would win the 12 kilometre uphill individual time trial, but just how much she would win by. Only one rider, van der Breggen, even finished within a minute, so van Vleuten’s healthy buffer on the overall stretched out to a phenomenal four minutes and 17 seconds.
All for one and one for all
The main game for the Australian team was undoubtedly to end the mountainous ten-day tour with van Vleuten in the pink jersey, and the team were unrelenting in their dedication to that task. Still, in a demonstration of team good will, opportunities were found to give those working so hard in support a chance to take their own victories.
In Stage 3 Kennedy was let loose in a break and came excruciatingly close to her first Women’s World Tour victory. Then on Stage 9 team leader van Vleuten compromised her own chances so Spratt could also ride onto the podium.
Leading out into the wind with an early attack, van Vlueten helped Spratt stretch out a big enough gap that she could leapfrog Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM) and Lucinda Brand (Team Sunweb) on the overall and shift from fifth on the general classification to third. In the process, though, van Vleuten also sheltered her biggest challenger for the stage win, Anna van Der Breggen (Boels Dolmans), who ultimately beat her to the line.
“Of course we would have liked the stage win …but for the stage win I should have attacked later,” said van Vleuten after the stage. “But to hear Spratt moved herself up to the [overall] podium took away any disappointment of getting second.”
Safely through
By Sunday’s final stage the scrambling for the podium positions was over and with their strong team around them the Mitchelton-Scott duo of van Vleuten and Spratt safely negotiated the final 120 kilometre stage to secure first and third in the Giro Rosa general classification for a second year. Two-time winner van der Breggen slotted into second, three minutes and 45 seconds behind van Vleuten.
#GiroRosa 💥What a race!💥
— Mitchelton-SCOTT (@MitcheltonSCOTT) July 14, 2019
So much commitment, so much sacrifice, so much suffering...
It’s was all worth it 🤩 2019 Giro-Rosa champion 👚👚👚@AvVleuten pic.twitter.com/JvHAYwfJFu
