Being beaten in a sprint feels like a familiar story for Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney (Canyon-SRAM zondacrypto), and it was no different on the opening day of the Spring Classics as the Polish rider was defeated in Omloop Het Nieuwsblad.
Niewiadoma-Phinney is impressively consistent in getting in the right moves and making races hard, as she did on Saturday, escaping with Demi Vollering (FDJ United-Suez) over Omloop’s final climbs, but her sprint seems to consistently let her down.
My view
Matilda Price
Niewiadoma-Phinney is always gracious and often positive in defeat, but it must be getting pretty frustrating that if there’s any kind of sprint, she knows she’s not going to win. As she goes on to say, she probably needs to spend more time not just going with the strong riders, but actually making the effort to go solo if she actually wants to win. Easier said than done, of course.
Niewiadoma-Phinney successfully navigated the pre-Muur chaos that took Lotte Kopecky (SD Worx-Protime) out of contention to follow Vollering’s acceleration on the climb – the only rider who was able to do so – but her own incident in the run-in to the ascent also cost her on the way to the finish.
“Just before the Muur, I dropped the chain and hit my knee against the handlebar, so I feel like the main thing in my head was just the stupid pain in my knee, so I was trying to let it go and cooperate [with Vollering],” she said. “It slightly goes down [after the Bosberg], so it’s not to my benefit to put the pure power down because I’m a bit of a lighter person. Demi was definitely more powerful on that section.”
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