‘Hell is not enough of a word to describe the conditions today.’ That was the verdict of Canyon-SRAM’s Kasia Niewiadoma after the 2018 Strade Bianche. She had just finished second in Siena for the third time in a row yet still had a smile on her face, reflecting that it was perhaps her destiny to be a perennial runner-up at what was fast growing into one of the most prestigious races on the women’s calendar.
‘It was an extremely tough race,’ she told Cyclingnews, ‘and I have a huge appreciation for every rider who managed to finish today.’
Held in early March, snow had hit the white roads of Tuscany in the days leading up to the race, but it was heavy rain and near-zero temperatures that met the peloton as it rolled out from Siena. Ahead of the 138-strong bunch was a 136km race that would take in 31km of gravel over eight sectors, the longest of which – Sector 5: San Martino in Grania – ran for 9.5km. But it was the last two sectors that were considered by most to be the toughest of the race, with the final 1.1km stretch of gravel featuring 18% grades and ending just 12km before the finish in Siena’s famous Piazza del Campo.
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‘For me it is one of the best races on the calendar because it is hard and a little bit different,’ 2017 winner Elisa Longo Borghini said before the start. ‘Tuscany is such beautiful country and Siena is just a nice place to end a race.’
The heavy rain turned the gravel roads into a quagmire and made an already technically demanding race even more challenging.
‘It was difficult to make a difference on the really steep parts on the gravel sections,’ Olympic road race champion Anna van der Breggen said after the finish. ‘It was clay gripping your tyres.’
Losing Anna
It was just after halfway that the race ignited when three riders got away from the main bunch on the 9.5km Sector 5. Reigning Road Race World Champion Chantal Blaak, Alena Amialiusik and Ellen van Dijk made for a fearsome break and they maintained a healthy lead into the final quarter of the race, their margin approaching 50 seconds at one point. However, with Longo Borghini prevalent in the chasing bunch of select riders, Blaak and Van Dijk returned to the pack, meaning Amialiusik’s hopes of springing a surprise win were all but over.
With a number of riders looking to make their move on the 2.4km penultimate sector of gravel – Colle Pinzuto, a section with a maximum gradient of 15% – it was Boels Dolmans’ Van der Breggen who emerged back on to tarmac at the head of the race. Longo Borghini had been the only rider able to match Van der Breggen’s acceleration as the gravel road pitched up and she reached the top of the climb alongside the Dutchwoman, only to fall back after suffering a mechanical.
‘I tried to stay with Anna, but something got stuck in my wheel and she dropped me,’ Longo Borghini said after the race. ‘And when you lose Van der Breggen, you never come back. She is so strong.’
Indeed, Van der Breggen – pictured here wearing a black rain jacket and white helmet at the front of the thinned-out bunch before her race-winning move – would not be seen again by Longo Borghini nor anyone else, opening a race-winning gap on the final 17km into Siena.
After a race that would be long remembered for the terrible conditions in which it was run and the incredible images it produced, Van der Breggen’s winning margin was 49 seconds over Niewiadoma. It was Van der Breggen’s first road race of 2018 – just nine days earlier she had won a mountain bike race in Cyprus, perhaps the best preparation for a day spent racing on the soaked white roads of Italy.
‘I think it was one of the hardest races I ever did,’ Van der Breggen said afterwards. ‘I will remember this race for the rest of my life.’
Heroic endeavours
The 2018 race was just the fourth women’s edition of an event that had started in 1997 as the gran fondo L’Eroica Strade Bianche, where riders ride vintage bikes and wear vintage kit. In 2007 a men’s professional race – the Monte Paschi Eroica – was added to the event’s itinerary and later renamed Strade Bianche. In 2015 a women’s professional race was included for the first time with the US’s Megan Guarnier the inaugural female winner.
The following year the race opened the newly minted Women’s WorldTour. Lizzie Deignan prevailed while wearing the rainbow jersey, in the process becoming the first rider to lead the UCI Women’s WorldTour standings and the first rider, man or woman, to win the race wearing the rainbow bands.
After Longo Borghini’s 2017 victory, Van der Breggen’s win in 2018 was the first by a Dutch rider and opened the door to a period of Dutch dominance, with Annemiek van Vleuten (2019, 2020), Chantal van den Broek-Blaak (2021) and Demi Vollering (2023) all also standing on the top step of the podium in Siena.
Vollering’s 2023 win came as she sprinted for the line against SD Worx teammate and 2022 winner Lotte Kopecky – the Belgian being the only rider to have broken the Netherlands’ stranglehold on the women’s race since Van der Breggen opened her country’s account. After the pair had distanced Jayco-AlUla’s Kristen Faulkner (who would later be disqualified for wearing a glucose monitor during the race) on the final climb into the Piazza del Campo, Kopecky and Vollering went pedal to pedal in the final sprint. Vollering threw her bike across the line just ahead of her teammate in another dramatic climax to what has fast become one of cycling’s most eagerly anticipated early-season Classics.
• This article originally appeared in issue 149 of Cyclist magazine. Click here to subscribe
