Anna van der Breggen ran a wild road/mtb 1x for Vuelta’s acent of Angliru

It was a brutal finish line for La Vuelta Femenina on Saturday. To cap off seven days of racing at the first women’s Grand Tour of the year, organisers sent racers up the 1,550-m L’Angliru. It was a severe test of fitness and form to finish off the week’s racing, coming after 130km of racing that day.

With such an imposing finish line on tap, SD-Worx Anna van der Breggen opted for an equally special bike set up. Van der Breggen’s Specialized Tarmac SL8’s usual 2x drivetrain was ditched for a distinctive 1x option, mixing road and gravel components from team drivetrain sponsor, SRAM.

Up front, a single 46t chainring. Distinctive, but not unique as we’ve seen other racers go for the 1x option for mountain top finishes in the past. It’s the cassette and derailleur that sets this hyper-specific set-up apart. Van der Breggen dug into the SRAM archives to run a mountain bike XX1 Eagle AXS wireless rear derailleur and massive, 10-52-tooth cassette.

Eagle rises from SRAM’s archives for Vuelta

The XX1 is from SRAM’s first generation of wireless AXS parts (and was recently phased out of the brand’s drivetrain options). The SD Worx team mechanics had to use old XX1, instead of SRAM’s newer T-Type XPLR wide-range (10-46) cassette, as the Specialized frame uses a traditional derailleur hangar. The newer XPLR group’s direct mount design requires a UDH compatible frame, which is still rare on the road.

Van der Breggen also had the option for a slightly smaller cassette. Instead of the full, rainbow coloured 10-52 cassette, the Dutch star could have used SRAM’s 10-50t Eagle cassette. Both are compatible with the XX1 AXS rear derailleur. SRAM improved the steps between cogs for the 10-52 cassette, though, so even with the huge jump between the largest two cogs, many riders found the steps between the other 11 gears smoother on the wider range cassette.

The older cassette is also why van der Breggen wasn’t running SRAM’s flat-top design chain for the stage, as it is not compatible with the older cassette model.

Van der Breggen flies, but Blasi soars in Vuelta finale

While the bike was certainly distinctive, the plan didn’t quite work for the Dutch rider. Van der Breggen finished 59 seconds behind stage winner Petra Stiasny (Human Powered Health). More importantly, she finished 36 seconds behind Paula Blasi (UAE…