The women’s peloton headed home from Sardinia on Sunday with nine extremely tough days of racing in their legs after the Giro d’Italia Donne reached its conclusion. After Annemiek van Vleuten’s dominance throughout, it is fair to say that the fight for the general classification didn’t reach have the exciting crescendo that fans hope for from a stage race (the abandonment of Lidl-Trek’s Elisa Longo Borghini after her crash on stage five and the heavily front-loaded course design can be blamed for this), but there is still plenty to talk about from the longest women’s stage race of the season.
What does Van Vleuten’s performance tell us about what we should expect from the Tour de France Femmes in a few weeks time? Who are the young talents to watch out for in stage races to come? Will the Giro finally be a bit more professional when RCS Sport takes over the organisation of the race in 2024? Here are the key talking points from the 2023 edition of the Giro d’Italia Donne.
Van Vleuten will go out with a bang
For a moment earlier this season, it looked like we might never see the Annemiek van Vleuten of old again. It appeared as if the strength she had shown in previous years, when she attacked and rode away from her rivals to win stage races by minutes, was a mere memory. It seemed that now, everyone could follow her when she put the hammer down on the mountains; Van Vleuten was still very good, but she was not, as Elisa Longo Borghini once described her, “the alien” that we had seen in years previous. The Giro d’Italia Donne changed that.
Van Vleuten won the pink jersey on stage two after a solo breakaway that saw her beat Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig (FDJ-Suez) who finished in second place by almost one minute. For the rest of the race, the maglia rosa never left her shoulders – Van Vleuten led with apparent ease and was never really in danger of losing her grasp on the Giro. In fact, she won so many pink jerseys that she was able to give one to her entire team at the end of the race to celebrate. In the end, Van Vleuten won the general classification by almost four minutes ahead of Juliette Labous (Team dsm-firmenich), as well as the points and the mountains jersey, not to mention three stage wins along the way. That’s what you call dominance.
Image: Dario Belingheri/Getty Images
At the end of last year, Van Vleuten announced that the 2023 season would be her last in the professional peloton. The 40-year-old has won…