The signs had been there in the opening stages of the Tour de France Femmes, but the spotlight of the individual time trial made it painfully clear – Anna van der Breggen may have had the form to fight her way onto the podium of two Grand Tours already this year, though it wasn't holding at the same level for the third.
On stage 1, she had already ceded a little ground to many of her rivals, falling three seconds back from the top group on the punchy finish. However, it would have been simple to retrieve mere seconds if the SD Worx-Protime rider could just replicate the strength of the time trial performance delivered at the Giro d'Italia in June, where she won the race against the clock and in the process carved out a gap of more than a minute to the rest of the field, including world champion Marlen Reusser (Movistar).
However, the outcome two months down the line couldn't have been more different. Instead of the 21 km time trial being the making of the experienced campaigner's overall assault, it was the moment we saw it breaking.
"Anna has already had a couple of days complaining about not having a good feeling, and the time trial is really hard. I mean, you cannot hide, you just need to do it on your own," said SD Worx-Protime sports manager Danny Stam after the stage.
The writing was on the wall for Van der Breggen early, as she went through the 9.7km intermediate time check at 16:08, which already put her 12th at that point even though her key rivals were yet to come. She then finished with a time of 28:39, just enough for 14th place at the end of the day and down 1:09 on stage winner Reusser. Van der Breggen was even behind Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney (Canyon-SRAM), a rider who herself was quick to admit the discipline wasn't one of her strengths, and also Elisa Longo Borghini (UAE Team L'IMAD), who had a late mechanical.
Particularly in a peloton that's seen some illness, the obvious question after an uncharacteristic showing in the race against the clock from Gevrey-Chambertin to Dijon was whether or not Van der Breggen was perhaps unwell.
"She doesn't look sick, she doesn't feel sick, her appetite is good," said Stam. "It's just not going how she wants it."
The puzzle remains why, not just for onlookers but also for her team, who have won two stages already with Lorena Wiebes but entered the race with overall hopes too.
"We don't know, we simply don't know," said Stam. "She was good in La Vuelta, she was going good in [the] Giro. Actually, she had a really good altitude camp without any struggles, no sickness, nothing, so it's difficult to understand the body sometimes."
What is a little clearer, though, is the consequences. Even though the scale of the loss didn't compare to that suffered by Pauline Ferrand-Prévot (Visma-Lease a Bike), the defending champion is expected to be able to make up ground in the mountains, while for Van der Breggen the time trial was the chance to get time on her rivals that are stronger on the long climbs.
Now, however, the Dutch rider is going to be heading along the path toward the big test on Mont Ventoux already in eighth position overall and with a 1:17 deficit to leader Reusser.
"I think our general ambitions, we need to change the plan on that," said Stam. "So I think further on we focus on the stages, and hopefully Anna also gets some good feeling back in there."
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