Yesterday saw another hard race at the Trofeo Alfredo Binda. 131.7 km consisting of a short point-to-point from Taino to Cittiglio, one large circuit, and four laps of a 17.8-km circuit with two climbs - Casale short and steep, Orino 4 km long and gradual.
Not much happened until the second of those four laps where
Alena Amialiusik
[1] &
Ane Santesteban (plus briefly
Elinor Barker) went away, but they never got more than a minute. On the penultimate lap
Megan Guarnier &
Małgorzata Jasińska jumped across the 20-second gap. Those four had 57 seconds going into the final lap, but mainly
halved that within two kilometres (not exactly hampered by a very eager camera moto that may have given the chasers some slipstream).
Katarzyna Niewiadoma opened up on the Casale climb, catching the front group and reducing a fairly large peloton to only 12-13 riders (that she,
Karol-Ann Canuel &
Elisa Longo Borghini - the local hero, living only a few km away from the course - descended away from only to be caught again). On the Orini climb, after some failed attempts by
Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, Amialiusik
[2] & Canuel, Kaśia put in her second dig, and nobody could follow.
Official reporting by yours truly:
CN: Niewiadoma solos to victory in rainy Trofeo Alfredo BindaCN: Niewiadoma takes inspiration from Nibali with daring Trofeo Alfredo Binda attackDid Kaśia 'do a Nibali' - or did Nibali 'do a Kaśia' on the Poggio before it was called that?
We'll never know.
After the top of the climb, the Pole continued on without second thought. She said that she had been inspired by a similar all-or-nothing attack in the men's Milan-San Remo the day before. "We were watching Milan-San Remo, and we saw Nibali's move where he attacked and never looked back. He mentioned that afterwards in the interview that he just went all-out and wanted to give all that he had left in his legs. And I thought that was so inspiring, to just do everything you can and keep on going, never looking back. I am so, so happy to deliver this victory to the team after this great effort."
Kaśia got a frog on the podium!
And she's now the leader of the WWT.
https://twitter.com/Babelia1/status/975402489968242689Next up, the confusedly-named Driedaagse Brugge-De Panne one-day race on Thursday. 151.7 km from Brugge to De Panne, flat as a Belgian pancake, mostly going along the coast. Race outcome will probably depend a lot on the wind - with a westerly wind, echelons galore, without it, sprint.
I guess the sprinters need something too.
