road race vargarda@2011 Womens World Cup

Annemiek van Vleuten (Nederland Bloeit) regained her place as World Cup leader from team-mate, Marianne Vos, in a strategic race, played out ot perfection by the Dutch squad. The pair are now placed first and second in the World Cup standings with just one race, GP de Plouay to go.

The decisive break formed with three and a half laps left of the twelve lap race. Far from sitting-in on the break, van Vleuten was active throughout, driving on the main climb and also out of Vargarda, on a short, steep rise after a railway bridge at the beginning of the circuit. She also initiated the sprint, which she took with confidence to win in Vargarda.

The breakaway group, which contained van Vleuten, Ellen van Dijk (HTC-HighRoad), Nicole Cooke (SC MCipollini Giordana), Irene van den Broek (AA Drink), Iris Slappendal (/Garmin-Cervelo) Oxana Kozonchuck (Russia) and Regina Bruins (Netherlands) was caught in the closing kilometre, but not before van Vleuten, van Dijk and Cooke had opened up their sprint. Van Vletuen was clearly in control in the final 250 metres, but she made sure of her win by sprinting to the line and only celebrating afterwards with a short punch in the air and a shout of delight.

Marianne Vos, who was wearing the World Cup leader jersey in the race and was in prime position in the bunch when it caught the breakaway, sat up when she realised that her team-mate would win, she then watched for the finishing position of nearest competitor in the season-long competition, Emma Johansson (Hitec Products), who managed tenth. Vos knew immediately that was enough for van Vleuten to take the World Cup lead, she (Vos) made her own two-handed celebration for her team-mate as she passed through the finish area.

Annemiek van Vleuten clearly enjoyed the race: "We went away in the third last lap. I was there with a lot of Dutch girls and it was perfect. We worked well together. It was exciting because the gap wasn't very big. No bigger than 40-45 seconds I think. In the end it almost came back together. I attacked with 800m to go. I felt so strong today. I had really good legs and I was in front from the start of the sprint," said van Vleuten.

Marianne Vos, gave her reaction to the World Cup situation: "She [Johansson] wasn't near the front. She and her team had done much of the work to try to close the gap and I think it was all too much in the end. We knew Annemiek was strong and she had really good legs. To have both of us in the top two places is incredible. said Vos,
The top three in the World Cup competition are van Vletuen (287 points), Vos (280 ) and Johansson (213) with one round remaining. Whilst the Dutch pair of van Vleuten and Vos are closely matched for the overall World Cup title, Emma Johansson must win in Plouay with van Vleuten failing to finish in the top twenty in order to wrest the Championship from an otherwise almost certain Nederland Bloeit win.

Category:

Sports

Tags:

• road
• race
• vargarda
• annemiek
• van
• vleuten
• marianne
• vos
• teutenberg
• emma
• johansson
• swedish
• open
• uci
• women
• world
• cup
• cycling
• nicole
• cooke
• dijk