Spain’s Paula Blasi (UAE Team ADQ) held off a strong, last-minute chase to win Amstel Gold Race Ladies, crossing the line solo after attacking with 20km to go to take the biggest win of her career.
The 23-year-old bridged to Nienke Vinke (SD Worx-Protime) with 25km to go, then left Vinke behind on the Cauberg with one lap to go and opened a gap of more than a minute to the chasing peloton.
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“I think I will need a couple of weeks or even months to realise it. I wasn’t even supposed to be here. I just signed up yesterday because we had some injuries and sickness. It wasn’t even on my mind to be racing here. Now I need to take a breather and accept what happened,” said Blasi after her victory.
“When I crossed the finish line [with one lap to go], I didn’t even know how many kilometres I had left. I thought, ‘hopefully I have just five to go’, and then suddenly they said, ‘you have still 20 to go’. I knew it was going to be a hard day in the front,” the Spaniard recounted of her debut appearance in this race.
Before going on the attack, Blasi had struggled in the fast, attacking race.
“Five minutes before I did the breakaway, I was dropped. So I just came back and I said, ‘OK, let’s give it a go, try to help the team’, and then suddenly I found myself in the front. Since the beginning, I was struggling quite a bit with the positioning because it’s my first race here.
“I was a bit nervous, and it was like nothing that I’ve done before. This bunch is quite crazy. It’s quite difficult to be in the front, and that’s actually the most important part. I was way behind, being dropped, coming back, being dropped … So at one point I said, ‘if you can go in the breakaway, it’s better because then you will not have to fight for the position’.”
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