Alfredo Binda Trophy – Municipality of Chittillo is one of the longest competitions on the women’s calendar and the Italian race, with a record of dynamic attacking events, marks the seventh round of the Women’s World Tour in 2023.
The field will look for a smoother path to the starting line than it turns out for the sixth. Ronde van Drenthe was hit with snow and uncertainty before Lorena Vibes (SD Worx) emerged victorious in the 94km short race. Vibes’ win also meant she moved into the top tier series lead, but considering she doesn’t race the Trofeo Alfredo Binda, so she could have easily found a new owner at the Italian event.
The March 19 race, which has a habit of ending with either a shortened group sprint or a single winner, started just south of the Chittillo finish line at Cocchio Trevisago last year, but this year will start further towards the finish line on Sunday. to the north, on the shores of Lake Maggiore. After the Maccagno start line, the race will run to Porto Valtravaglia before turning back towards Germignaga before dropping down to finish the key last half of the race on the same track as last year.
The 139km race, first run in 1974, will culminate in four laps of the 18km finish line, including climbing Casalzuinho and ascending Orino en route to the Chittillo finish, where we’ll find out if attacking or sprinting will secure a 2023 winner. Either way, it’s likely to be an intense battle to the bitter end, with plenty of opportunity on the finish lines and plenty of strong options on the starting roster teams set to fan the flames.
Cycling news highlights the most important topics for discussion before the Trofeo Alfredo Binda.
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Will domestic racers be able to dominate again?
Last year it was the all-Italian Trofeo Alfredo Binda podium, with Elisa Balsamo taking down Trek-Segafredo and Sofia Bertizzolo (UAE Team ADQ) and Soraya Paladin (Canyon-SRAM) rounding out the podium. In 2023, there will again be many strong home country contenders to open up the possibility of a repeat.
Balsamo returned to defence, but his teammate and 2021 winner Elisa Longo Borghini out of action after recovering from COVID-19, which eliminates one green-white-red podium option, but there are many more. Even among the limited number of teams that confirmed their rosters three days before the race, a strong list of contenders is clearly visible.
We know for sure that last year’s winners Bertizzolo and Paladin will be at the start, plus Trek-Segafredo may not have Longo Borghini, but they have added Gaia Realini, who just won the Trofeo Oro. UAE Team ADQ also includes Sylvia Persico. The 25-year-old Italian finished seventh last year racing for Valcar-Travel & Service and looks forward to more in 2023.
“The Binda Trophy always proves to be a tough race, especially this year,” Persico said in a race press release last month. “Hopefully I can do even better than last year.”
Women’s World Tour Leaderboard Revealed
Following the return of the 2023 Australian Women’s WorldTour, the Santos Tour Down Under and the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race, Amanda Spratt entered the European season with purple race leader jersey in the top-level racing series on the back. Considering she was over 200 points ahead of her nearest opponent, it would take another a while to even come close to taking her away.
Spratt took the jersey through Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, Strade Bianche and straight to Ronde van Drenthe, although the only one of the three Women’s WorldTour events she competed in was the Italian round on Tuscany’s white gravel roads. However, at Ronda van Drenthe, Lorena Vibes (SD Worx) finally closed the gap with the win and now, with 848 points, holds a gap of more than 100 on the Spratt with 730, while Lotte Kopecky makes it the SD Worx sandwich. sitting in third – 720. There are three more riders within 400 points: Grace Brown (FDJ-Suez), Elisa Longo Borghini (Trek-Segafredo) and Loes Adegest (FDJ-Suez).
Vibes is not racing on Sunday, so there is every chance the lead could change hands again at Trofeo Alfredo Binda-Comune di Cittiglio. It could even be Spratt, who finished second at the 2019 Italian race, again in purple.
What would the Milan-San Remo women’s race mean for the Binda Trofeo?
The Milano Sanremo Men’s Monument is on the same weekend as the Trofeo Alfredo Binda and for now it did not happen for 2023 calls for a women’s version of the race continue. The list of high-profile races on the women’s calendar has expanded significantly in recent years, and one of the next obvious moves is the introduction of women’s races such as Paris-Roubaix and the reintroduction of the women’s Tour de France and Milan-San Remo.
However, one effect of the increase is pressure on the calendar, raising the question of what will happen to the Alfredo Binda Trofeo if the Milan-San Remo women’s race is introduced? Milan-San Remo organizers indicated last year that they planned to run the race on the same day as the men’s race, which could lead to a weekend clash, not days.
A race that has recognized the value of the women’s race for so long since the Italian race started back in 1974 does not deserve to be relegated. However, it would be difficult to continue to put together a strong peloton if it were up against the prestigious Milan-San Remo race, especially as the current size of the women’s lineups makes it difficult to field two strong lineups at the same time. This raises the possibility that this is potentially the last edition we could see at that position on the Trofeo Binda calendar, as one possible solution – but certainly not the only one – is for the race to move to a different slot in 2024. if female Represented by Milan-San Remo.
History and victory run SD Worx
The Women’s WorldTour races returned to Europe with Omloop Het Nieuwsblad on February 25 after the first three rounds took place in Australia and the United Arab Emirates. That’s when SD Works began to claim a place at the top of the podium as their own.
First it was Lotte Kopecky, who took the solo break victory at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, while new teammate Lorena Wiebes won the group sprint and finished second. Then in white roads it was Demi Vollering who climbed to the top of the podium and it was another one-two with Kopecky in second as Vollering knocked out somewhat controversial friendly sprint after the couple got on the line together. The streak then continued to the sixth round of the Women’s World Tour as this time Vibs took first place in Guided tour of Drenthe.
Judging by history, the seventh competition of the Women’s World Tour could mean the end of this race. Trek-Segafredo have been winning races for the past two years and while SD Worx may have been one of the best teams in the women’s peloton for a long time, it’s been a long time since they’ve been at the top of Cittillo. In fact, the last time the team won a race was in 2016, when Lizzy Deignan took the win for what was then the Boels Dolmans. Even the podium eluded the team in recent competitions: the last time on the podium was Chantal van den Broek-Blaak in 2018.
Powerful Trek-Segafredo field for a triple run.
Last year at Trofeo Alfredo Binda the women’s peloton showed its best in attack, demonstrating a dynamic race in which attacks and rebuffs constantly alternated. Many key teams had multiple maps to play and multiple bullets to shoot, so the attacks, chases, and neutralizations just kept going, resulting in an exciting run to that final shortened group sprint in which Elisa Balsamo (Trek-Segafredo) took the win.
From the way the starting roster is shaping up, there will be several teams that have more than one rider capable of finishing at the top level, from the ADQ UAE team with Silvia Persico and Sofia Bertizzolo to Canyon-SRAM with Soraya Paladin, Kasia. Niewiadoma and Elise Chabbey, and while at the time of writing SD Worx have yet to release a roster, is there any event where they don’t line up with an impressive array of options?
With so many competitors, Trek-Segafredo might seem like a big challenge to take the title in the race for the third year in a row, especially as they fall short of 2021 winner Elisa Longo Borghini in the wake of COVID-19. Even though it’s such an important task to win, it looks like they have the tools to get the job done.
Balsamo will obviously be a closely watched trump card, but even with a team that has five left instead of six, they still have so much to play. For starters, there’s Shirin van Anroij, who was one of the team’s aggressors at last year’s race and is now gearing up for road season after knocking out the U23 cyclocross rainbow stripes. Then in 2023, there will be three new members of the Trek-Segafredo squad.
Amanda Spratt and Brodie…
Source: sports.yahoo.com
