One of the oldest women’s events in the calendar, Trofeo Alfredo Binda – Commune di Cittiglio, is also one of the rare one-day events of the spring where SD Worx-Protime doesn’t have its name scrawled all over the leaderboard through recent years. For three years running, the Women’s WorldTour race, which first took place 50 years ago, has been the dominion of Lidl-Trek.
Last year it was Shirin van Anrooij who took the honours for the team with a solo break, while Elisa Balsamo claimed the second spot from the small group sprint behind. That finishing turn of speed was the key to victory for the team in 2022, when Balsamo triumphed in a reduced bunch sprint, and in 2021 it was Elisa Longo Borghini with a solo win.
The question now is can the team claim its first Women’s WorldTour win of the year to make it four in a row in Cittiglio in 2024?
There are again multiple options to cover the usual race-winning scenarios of either a solo win or a small group sprint. The winners of the last two years – Van Anrooij and Balsamo – line up with a power-packed squad behind them, but there are also plenty of others who have shown that they have the ability to disrupt Lidl-Trek’s plight.
SD Worx-Protime, for one, will be have Elena Cecchini and Chantal van den Broek-Blaak, according to the preliminary start list, while Alpecin Deceuninck’s Puck Pieterse will come in with the jersey of the leader of the youth category in the Women’s WorldTour on her back. UAE Team ADQ are expected to come in with the strong duo of Sofia Bertizzolo and Silvia Persico while Canyon-SRAM’s Soraya Paladin will be seeing if she can continue, or even better on, her run of top five finishes.
The next point of reckoning in the Women’s WorldTour is rapidly approaching, so it is time for Cyclingnews to run the ruler over the favourites, as well as some of the outsiders, at the 140km race on Sunday March 17.
The unpredictability of Trofeo Alfredo Binda – with its two early climbs after setting off from Maccagno and then the four-time repeated combination of the Casalzuigno and Orino – means to have the best chance at winning a team needs to keep its bases covered. Lidl-Trek certainly has done that. The team has put together a squad that includes the last two winners of the race Shirin van Anrooij, who won solo in 2023, and Elisa Balsamo, who claimed the…
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