Seeing Anna van der Breggen on the front of a reduced bunch on the final slopes of Lagunas de Niela during last year’s Vuelta Femenina might have been a throwback, but it was hardly a surprise. With four overall victories at the Giro d’Italia Women, an Olympic gold medal, three rainbow jerseys and a host of other top-drawer victories to her name, the SD Worx-Protime rider spent years in rarified company as one of the best riders of her generation.
Quiet, modest, unassuming and always inscrutable, we’d grown accustomed to her grinding the opposition into the tarmac, simply riding away from her rivals when the race was at its hardest and the road at its steepest. Only one woman could beat her: Annemiek van Vleuten, who regularly bested her compatriot, setting up many memorable battles.
The Classics were relatively quiet, with 11th-place finishes at the Tour of Flanders and Liège-Bastogne-Liège the highlights, but they were merely the prelude to the stage races where many predicted Van der Breggen would challenge.
On the brutal but familiar slopes to Lagunas de Neila, a climb on which she won the 2021 Vuelta a Burgos, she was unable to drop her rivals, eventually finishing third, Vollering once again taking the win.
“I think the most difficult for me was in the beginning of the season, were the accelerations, I did not have them anymore so much,” Van der Breggen told Cyclingnews at SD Worx-Protime’s team launch in Antwerp.
“I can put a pace which is not too fast for me, but hopefully high…
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