27th April: Liège – Bastogne – Liège Femmes
La Doyenne saw the Women’s peloton take on several of Belgium’s famous climbs, with a challenging route as they made their way from Bastogne to Liège. Team Picnic PostNL set out with the goal of bringing Nienke Vinke and Marta Cavalli into the finale in a good way, and they did just that though good teamwork.
Hitting the Côte de la Redoute the already thinned down bunch decreased in size even more with Vinke fighting over the top to make it into a front group of just over 20 riders. From there, attacks and counter attacks peppered the head of the race, with Vinke digging deep each time the road kicked upwards. Ultimately she had to let go of the front of the race on the last ascent, before pushing to the line to finish just outside the top 20 on the day.
After the race Vinke said: “The first 50 kilometres were easy and we stayed well together as a team. After that the hills started and the race was hectic because of a lot of narrow roads and bad road surfaces. The climbs followed each other up very quickly from there and this made it very hard. Becky, Francesca, Josie and Eleonora tried to get in a breakaway in the middle part of the race but nothing really got away. The middle part was very hard already and we had a reduced bunch before La Redoute. For me personally I was having a bad day and my legs didn’t feel as good as they did mid-week unfortunately. After Redoute I ended up in the first group, but at Côte de Forges I completely parked and got dropped. I tried to ride a good pace and tried to not go over my limit, but every uphill section my legs were on the limit. The result is not really what I, and we, hoped for as a team but I tried to do the best I could.”
