Rider of the Year 2017 – The Best of the Best

Dec 15
cyclical

It’s entirely subjective, and just winning more races than anyone else is not quite enough to justify being the best rider of the year. However, the choice for the 2017 season is easier than it sometimes can be … who comes out on top? Here are riders five down to number one.

 

5 Jolien D’hoore

From a win in February (Omloop van het Hageland) to the Madrid Challenge in September, D’hoore was monumentally consistent, winning at least one race a month. The only blip – second at Gent-Wevelgem in March.

Jolien D’hoore started the season pretty much as she went on at Omloop van het Hageland.

She took stages at the Women’s Tour, the Giro, the Tour of Norway and Belgium Ladies Tour as well as two stages and the overall at Chongming Island.

For 2018, the winning machine takes her Belgian champion’s jersey to the newly-named Michelton-Scott squad, where she will offer more firepower to back up Annemiek Van Vleuten.

 

4 Elisa Longo Borghini

Italy’s top rider was competitive all year, and rode with real fire. She just didn’t get the wins she deserved.

Elisa Longo Borghini at the Women’s Tour pre-race press conference, June 2017

Strade Bianche to kick the season off was an emotional triumph in front of her family, and the National Titles road and ITT double was huge. Second at the Giro, third at La Course, and a near permanent fixture in the top ten across the Classics and stage races is enough to see ELB finish higher in our ranking than her UCI points would suggest.

 

3 Coryn Rivera

The young American talent didn’t win as often as the two Dutch women, but when she did hit the line first, her wins were huge. Trofeo Alfredo Binda in March was a big breakthrough at World Tour level, but the Ronde van Vlaanderen a couple of weeks later was of another magnitude, allying guts and tactical smarts to strength – both her own, and that of Team Sunweb, who had a fine year.

Rivera took a stage in California, the mega-purse Prudential RideLondon Classique and the Worlds TTT but the missed opportunities at the Giro mean there is plenty to get fired up for in 2018.

 

2 Annemiek Van Vleuten

Actually higher than van der Breggen in the Cycling Quotient rankings at season’s end, Van Vleuten had a brilliant year, which was simply a continuation of her phoenix-like rise from the Olympic ashes.

Constantly drilling it in races, she came up short in the Classics, she was as consistent a finisher as van der Breggen – just ten times outside the top 20 in 59 days of racing. Of course, the one major blemish was 101st in the Giro’s fourth stage, which arguably cost her the overall.

Her TT win up the ramp at Sant’Elpidio a Mare, on a climb that saw the men’s peloton walking a few years back was a foretaste of her emotional World TT gold medal in September.

She had 14 wins including both stages of the peculiar La Course by Le Tour de France, the lovechild of flawed ambition and proffered opportunity.

 

1 Anna van der Breggen

The Olympic champion from 2016 backed up that career-defining victory with a reputation-cementing sequence of wins. It’s not fair to compare van der Breggen with Marianne Vos at her peak, because Vos simply didn’t have the calendar of races to choose from that her compatriot won this year.

The winning run was kick-started with a third straight Flèche Wallone; the pain for her competitors compounded by a debut win at the revived Amstel Gold, and then the Ardennes Triple rounded off with Liège-Bastogne-Liège Femmes.

Attention turned to the stage race calendar and the Tour of California with a consistent four days yielding a close fought overall win on the final stage. The Giro d’Italia Femminile was more straightforward, set in motion by a blistering opening TTT win for Boels-Dolmans which left everyone else scrambling; Annemiek Van Vleuten’s tactical error in getting caught behind a split early in the race left van der Breggen the task of simple race management to clinch her second Giro.

In 57 race days, van der Breggen only finished lower than 20th on nine occasions, and only failed to finish one race all year. Panache, resilience, and bravery. There’s no doubt that the Dutch woman was the best rider of 2017.