Plenty may have changed in women's cycling since the era when Anna van der Breggen spent seven years straight walking away from the Ardennes Classics with at least one win in hand. This April, however, in her second season back from a set-aside retirement, the podium once again looked within reach for the Dutch rider.
Illness had stymied Van der Breggen's run at the three Ardennes races in her first year after returning, in 2025 delivering a DNF at Amstel Gold Race, a DNS at La Flèche Wallonne, which she has won seven times, and an eleventh at the 2025 Liège-Bastogne-Liège. This year, however, it was a far better start for the SD Worx-ProTime rider, with ninth at the opener and then fifth in the mid-week Flèche Wallonne. But then illness once again presented a hurdle.
“For the past two days already, I’ve been dealing with a cold. I tried what I could, but I really didn’t feel well," Van der Breggen said in a comment shared by the team on social media.
"It felt like I was riding at only 70% of my capacity. That was frustrating, because with good legs this is always a beautiful race.”
Despite that, the 36-year-old Dutch riders still managed to deliver fourth at Liège-Bastogne-Liège.
“In the end it was good, but I actually felt bad the entire race,” said Van der Breggen.
Demi Vollering (FDJ United-SUEZ) made her winning move from a heavily reduced peloton at 35km to go and while Van der Breggen wasn't at that point with the first bunch of chasers, she made it into the leading pursuit group at around 10km to go. It ultimately came down to a sprint for the remaining two podium places between Van der Breggen, Puck Pieterse (Fenix-Premier Tech) and Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney (Canyon-SRAM zondacrypto}, with Pieterse and Niewiadoma-Phinney taking second and third.
“Visma made it really hard on the climbs and I tried to follow where I could," said Van der Breggen. "We had really bad luck with Lotte Kopecky, who had mechanical problems. Otherwise, we were well positioned in the race, but I didn’t expect to still be sprinting for a podium in the end.”
However, after getting that close to the top three, it's not surprising that there were some thoughts of what could have been.
“It’s a pity that the Ardennes Classics are over now. I was getting better and better, and who knows what could have happened without that cold," Van der Breggen said.
Regardless, the strength of the result even in the less-than-ideal circumstances bodes well for what is ahead.
“Now it’s time to recover well and move on to the Vuelta,” Van der Breggen concluded.
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