After winning the Giro d’Italia Donne and the Tour de France Femmes Annemiek van Vleuten is aiming to put a stamp on a remarkable season by defending her title at the Ceratizit Challenge by la Vuelta, held from September 7-11. Organisers have expanded the race to five days with a conclusion in Madrid for the last time before the event shifts to a new May date on the 2023 Women’s WorldTour.
Van Vleuten has pointed to the Challenge by la Vuelta as a major late-season target, along with the UCI Road World Championships in Wollongong, as her last two events this year. She has placed a high priority on the Vuelta for two years in a row, as a home race for her Movistar team, winning the overall title in 2021 edition.
As Van Vleuten takes aim at her fourth consecutive Grand Tour victory, three within this season, she noted that out of the Giro d’Italia Donne, Tour de France Femmes and Challenge by la Vuelta, the Spanish event is the most difficult for her to win because the route doesn’t feature aspects that best suit her abilities, such as the major mountain stages which are found in the other two events.
At the Giro d’Italia, Van Vleuten won a stages into Cesena and Aldena, and at the Tour de France she won the two back-to-back mountain summit finishes at Le Markstein and La Super Planche des Belles Filles.
She believes that it is the length and difficulty of the stages that give a race a Grand Tour-feel, and has been vocal about her hopes that the organisers of the Vuelta expand its women’s event to include more stages and more challenging routes in future editions.
“In general, I think this will be the one from the Giro, the Tour and the Vuelta that is the hardest to target, because the route is not that hard. Everyone knows I’m a fan of harder racing, and my chances would be rising with a harder parcours, with longer stages, climbs and mileage,” Van Vleuten said.
“When it comes to the race itself, though, I cannot say that the ‘triple’ is a goal in itself. That owes to the fact that, even if the Ceratizit Challenge carries the name of La Vuelta on it, it still hasn’t got the hard stages nor the length, the kilometers, you’d like to find in what you would consider a Grand Tour – it’s also just five days at the moment, with one of them being Madrid’s circuit race.”
Van Vleuten’s hope is that the success of the women’s Tour de France, which was held across eight stages with tougher mountainous routes, will prompt the growth of other events like…
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