World Champs: Elite Women's Race
 

What

A

Race.

That final 20k was amazing!

Womens race
 

Certainly was, didnt expect that winner, entertaining right to the end.

How many times did van Vleuten attack? 50? 100? 1,000? 1,000,000,000?

Ellen van Dijk was also all over the front. So much strength on that team.

Mamma mia, what in the world was Winder doing covering all those moves while there were anywhere from 8-10 Dutch and Italian riders combined in her group (plus Rivera sitting in smartly for the finale)??

I really wish they had used it better. There's a different version of that race for the Dutch women where the sprinters get dropped before the Leuven circuit and Vos wins by 5 bike lengths.

And if they were racing for Vos, which it seemed like they were, then why can't they get something resembling a leadout organized in the last 2k?

Chapeau to Italy though- great job covering all the moves that mattered, staying out of the wind otherwise and delivering Balsamo in a great position.

If the Dutch women's team raced smart, they wouldn't be the Dutch women's team.

I had figured after the Olympics debacle and with the makeup of this year's team, with van der Breggen taking a sort of road captain/domestique role, that they'd be better organized. It still seems like they have too many leaders.

Cycling tactics often stop, but can be quite difficult to actually execute in the moment. The other riders can be unpredictable, and you need to adapt and adjust on the fly. More than anything else, that takes practice, and even then is easy to get wrong.

The Dutch still have too many leaders who just don't have the experience in any other role. They can talk all they want about how they want to do it better, but that doesn't help them practice it.