Lizzie Armitstead won the third round of the UCI Women’s World Tour (WWT) today. The victory was the third in the last four races she’s ridden and her second WWT first place.
It’s also marks a hat trick for Boels-Dolmans in the WWT, after Chantal Blaak took a proud position on the top step at Ronde van Drenthe last weekend.
The UCI World Champion Armitstead finished one second ahead of teammate Megan Guarnier at Trofeo Binda in Italy today, with Servetoo Footon rider Jolanda Neff a further four seconds back.
The 123km race consisted of one long lap of 49km, before 4 short laps just under 20km. Though there were some earlier attacks, it wasn’t until the third short lap when eight riders made a decisive move.
The eight was made up of Armitstead, Guarnier, Emma Johansson (Wiggle High5), World Tour leader Anna van der Breggen (Rabo Liv), Katarzyna Niewiadoma (Rabo Liv), Alena Amialiusik (Canyon SRAM), Annemiek Van Vleuten (Orica AIS), and Neff.
With just 20km to go, the group had a minute on the bunch. This did decrease to 40 seconds, before Neff attacked on the final climb. She valiantly created her own gap of a further 40 seconds, and it wasn’t until there was 4km to go that Armitstead made her move and closed down on the Swiss rider.
Armitstead crossed the line first, just one second ahead of her team mate and USA National Champ Guarnier.
