Despite her elbow injury, Annemiek van Vleuten (the Netherlands) took an incredible victory in the women’s elite road race at the UCI Road World Championships (including Women Under-23) in Wollongong, Australia. The silver medal was won by Lotte Kopecky (Belgium), and the bronze medal by Silvia Persico (Italy). Polish representative Katarzyna Niewiadoma was 8th. During the championships, the Polish team consisted of Katarzyna Niewiadoma, Karolina Kumięga, Marta Lach, Agnieszka Jaskulska, Dominika Włodarczyk, and Agnieszka Skalniak-Sójka.
In the Women Elite road race, the Netherlands’ Van Vleuten lined up despite breaking her elbow in the team time trial. Van Vleuten’s victory was the 98th of her professional career in a stellar season that’s seen her win the Giro d’Italia Donne, Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift and Ceratizit Challenge by la Vuelta.
It looked as though a group of 12 would contest the win in a reduced bunch sprint but Van Vleuten had other ideas and jumped clear from the back of the group having been dropped previously on the last two laps of the race. She tore through the final bends, unable to get out of the saddle due to her injuries, but managed to hold off the sprinters who simply waited too long before unleashing their final kicks to the line. (velonews.com)
Women riders competed on the 164-kilometer route in total. In the first part of the race, they managed to encounter the most challenging part of the route – the 8.7 kilometer long ride the way up Mount Keira. They also had to conquer a short but very steep mountain – Mount Pleasant.
Our Polish rider Katarzyna Niewiadoma scored 8th place during the Elite road race. Check one of the interviews with Katarzyna Niewiadoma after the championships [English]:
Top10 riders of the race:
STAGE RANK NAME TEAM TIME 1 VAN VLEUTEN Annemiek Netherlands 4:24:25 2 KOPECKY Lotte Belgium 0:01 3 PERSICO Silvia Italy 0:01 4 LIPPERT Liane Germany 0:01 5 LUDWIG Cecilie Uttrup Denmark 0:01 6 SIERRA Arlenis Cuba 0:01 7 LABOUS Juliette France 0:01 8 NIEWIADOMA Katarzyna Poland 0:01 9 CHABBEY Elise Switzerland 0:01 10 LONGO BORGHINI Elisa Italy 0:01