Giro Rosa 2017 – Stage 6 Preview

Jul 5
cyclical

How much harder did Annemiek Van Vleuten ride than anyone else if she managed to put 10’47” into the last placed rider of the stage 5 TT in less than 13 kilometers? It was a stunning performance from the Dutchwoman, to keep the general classification fight alive.

Stage 5 review

That Van Vleuten won was no surprise; that she won by such margins might well be. She was one of the few riders to go with a TT set-up and she also had to contend with a dropped chain en-route.

That L’Anita, the Giro Rosa’s road book should make the route profile look like a benign, gently rolling day out when it was actually a ferocious challenge is also not that much of a surprise. In this case, the gradients of the Muro di Cocciari climb (literally meaning a wall) reached almost 30% allowing the top TT specialists to rip out huge time gaps, while the domestiques with little to ride for other than recovery were forced to go much deeper than necessary. This was a climb faced by the men in Tirreno-Adriatico back in 2013.

Early benchmarks were set by Miriam Bjornsrud (Hitec Products) at 29′ 05″ and then Monika Kiraly from S.C Michela Fanini Rox at 28′ 31″, before stage three winner Hannah Barnes clocked 27′ 42″ for Canyon-SRAM.

With Van Vleuten out on the course, her Orica-Scott teammate Amanda Spratt laid down a 27′ 17″. The Dutch time trial champion then stormed through in 25′ 29″ to demolish the previous mark. Van Der Breggen and Longo Borghini both did strong rides to limit the damage, but Megan Guarnier slipped back a little, into 5th overall.

Van Vleuten’s DS Gene Bates said preparation was key last week: “We spent a whole day on the course, trialling different equipment, we used road bikes, time trial bikes, disks and we found that there was enough flat and fast sections of the course that it would still be beneficial to use a time trial bike which Van Vleuten did. I think that is what really helped us today along with knowing the course really well and how steep the climb actually was.”

Stage 5 Result, Sant’Elpidio a Mare ITT, 12.7km

1 Annemiek Van Vleuten (Orica-Scott) 25′ 29″

2 Anna Van Der Breggen (Boels-Dolmans) + 41″

3 Elisa Longo Borghini (Wiggle-High5) + 1′ 15″

4 Amanda Spratt (Orica-Scott) +1′ 48″

5 Megan Guarnier (Boels-Dolmans) + 1′ 53″

6 Arlenis Sierra (Astana Women’s Team) + 2′ 01″

7 Katarzyna Niewiadoma (WM3 Pro Cycling) + 2′ 03″

8 Claudia Lichtenberg (Wiggle-High5) + 2′ 10″

9 Hannah Barnes (Canyon-SRAM) + 2′ 13″

10 Karol-Ann Canuel (Boels-Dolmans) + 2′ 17″

Overall After Stage 5

1 Anna Van Der Breggen (Boels-Dolmans) 9hrs 02′ 35″

2 Elisa Longo Borghini (Wiggle-High5) + 1′ 00″

3 Annemiek Van Vleuten (Orica-Scott) + 1′ 36″

4 Megan Guarnier (Boels-Dolmans) + 3′ 08″

5 Amanda Spratt (Orica-Scott) + 3′ 29″

Stage 6 preview

This route profile has SPRINT FINISH stamped all over it, giving the fast-finishers arguably their last opportunity until stage 9. Continuing with the theme of one town hosting both the start and finish of a stage, the honor today goes to Roseto degli Abruzzi.

The course distance is 116.16 kilometers, but that over a circuit to be raced four times. The only ‘mountain’ and sprint points on offer will be on the third lap, and the sprinters’ teams will have the chance to examine the approach to the line on each passage.

There are four 90-degree corners leading to the red kite, then we have one roundabout and a dead-straight sprint along the seafront finish at Lungomare Celommi.