Prowomenscycling.com has a report and a replay-video of Sunday's road race in its entirety, courtesy UCI (as are the videos shown above). The penultimate round of the 2014 UCI Women's World Cup was in Sweden last weekend, and this was the World Cup round that consists of two races: first, a team time-trial (which is important as a bellwether for how the upcoming UCI Road World Championships TTT could shape up) on Friday, August 22 followed up by the road race (Open de Suède Vårgårda) on Sunday the 24th. This year, the races are name-sponsored by the Swedish bike-maker Crescent.
This year's TTT was expected to be a little more competitive, with American-based powerhouse Team Specialized-lululemon winning the past 3 years (2011 - then as HTC Highroad Women's Team, 2012 and 2013) and other teams stepping up to the plate to try to catch them, but 2014 was the same ol' story - only this time the favorites set a new course average-speed record of over 49 km/hr (over 30 mi/hr) - and in very wet, rainy conditions this year! Rabobank Liv (featuring, of course, reigning Olympic and double-World Champion Marianne Vos and Dutch ITT national champion Annemiek van Vleuten) was 2nd at over a minute-&-half back. Another Dutch Team, Boels Dolmans (with World Cup overall-leader Liz Armitstead and reigning ITT World Champion Ellen van Dijk) was third still another minute behind RaboLiv. The American team continued their good fortunes with Sunday's road race, with their Dutch classics-star Chantal Blaak winning in a 3-up late breakaway sprint over her compatriots Amy Pieters (Liv Shimano) and Roxane Knetemann (Rabobank Liv). With Vos and super-sprinter Kirsten Wild in 4th and 5th from the chase-group behind the leaders, it was an all-Dutch top-5! This bodes well for Marianne's chances for a three-peat in the World Championships road race. Liz Armitstead, by finishing 3rd in the TTT and 8th in the road race, has garnered enough World Cup points to clinch the 2014 World Cup title, with still one more round to go. Congrats, Lizzie!! |