Marianne Vos starts road season with seventh place in Strade Bianche
At 53 kilometres from the finish, the peloton caught the early breakaway riders. The black and yellow formation worked hard and Coryn Labecki put Vos in perfect position at the front of the group.
Several attacks followed. They were all unsuccessful, so at twenty kilometres from the finish the peloton was still complete. When Lotte Kopecky attacked, Vos followed with six other riders, including Demi Vollering and Elisa Longo Borghini. Together they rode towards Via Santa Caterina in Siena. Vos had to let go just a few kilometres from the finish, resulting in seventh place after 136 dusty kilometres.
"We worked together well, we were in front all the time."
“As a team, we rode a good race, but I would have liked to do better”, sighed a slightly disappointed Vos. “We worked together well, we were in front all the time and we never really got into trouble. I never felt unsafe. But in the final the pace was high and at the decisive moment I could not keep up anymore. I hoped I could recover and manage to come back, but it was not enough.”
Sports director Carmen Small had seen a good team. “The riders did well and stuck to the plan. They helped each other, were always in front of the peloton and followed all the attacks. It would have been nice if we had had another rider in the final, but unfortunately that wasn’t the case. Everyone on the team did what they could. We’ll take all the lessons learned with us to be even stronger at the start of the next race.”
