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Chantal Blaak of the Netherlands wins road world championship

Race-winning move came on final descent of Salmon Hill; GB's Hannah Barnes was among group challenging for win...

Chantal Blaak of the Netherlands is the new women’s road world champion after a late attack in Bergen saw her solo her way to victory at the end of the 152.8-kilometre race.

While a Dutch winner wasn’t a surprise given the strength in depth of its team, expectations had been that it would be Anna van der Breggen, the Olympic road race champion, or Annamiek van Vleuten, who won the time trial earlier this week, who would be challenging for victory in Norway.

Blaak, aged 27, was one of three riders who got away on the penultimate lap, the others being France’s Audrey Cordon and Great Britain’s Hannah Barnes.

On the final climb of Salmon Hill, the trio were joined by van der Breggen, van Vleuten, Australia’s Katrin Garfoor and Poland’s Katarzyna Niewiadoma.

Coming over the top of the climb, van Vleuten attacked but was swiftly brought back, then Blaak made what proved to be the race-winning move.

With a compatriot up front, van Vleuten and van der Breggen didn’t need to chase, and while Barnes and Niewiadoma tried to bring her back, with 2 kilometres to go it was clear she had a race-winning advantage which she stretched out on the way to the line.

Her six pursuers were swept up by the main bunch ahead of the finish, and while Garfoot took silver, 28 seconds behind the Dutchwoman, it was last year’s champion, Amalie Dideriksen, who won bronze.

Barnes finished 14th, with Great Britain team mate Dani King, who had animated the race with an earlier attack, 20th. Lizzie Deignan, road world champion in 2015 and who underwent an operation to remove her appendix last month, was 41st.

After her victory, Blaak, who had crashed earlier in the race, said:  "I can’t believe it. Everything happened in the race and actually it took pretty long to get back up, I was in a lot of pain on that moment I thought my race was over.

"I thought I’d try to come back and see what I could do but it was not really the plan that I should win the race. I just wanted to make it as good as possible for the team.

“Then I came in the good break, that was a good thing because I could get over the climb in front. After that, I just followed my heart and I stayed away," she added.

Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.

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madcarew | 7 years ago
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Nice to see the women getting a decent length race.

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Goldfever4 replied to madcarew | 7 years ago
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Especially after the organisers forgot to let them have at the hill at the end of the ITT.

Road race was brilliant, Hannah Barnes was awesome and deserved to medal, got bad luck in the final shakedown with 3 Dutch there.

 

madcarew wrote:

Nice to see the women getting a decent length race.

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