It’s been few weeks now since I finished the Giro d’Italia Women. Nevertheless I wanted to take the chance to give you some more insights into what happened behind the scenes and which challenges we had to face as a team.
Before the race even starts, we do a couple of meetings upfront to prepare as well as possible. We analyse the courses and discuss race scenarios. Of course, you never know what will happen exactly, but it’s important to go into the race with a plan. But as you will see later, we had to adapt our plan quite a lot. Our main goal of the Giro was the GC win with Juliette Labous. The opening time trial set her up just 29 seconds behind the winner Elisa Longo Borghini. It was a good start as we expected big time gaps in the mountain stages and getting back 29 seconds seemed possible.
The days are structured pretty much the same. We always have breakfast 3:15 hours before the start. Then we drive with the bus to the start. I like to call it “traveling in a living room”. You can enjoy a coffee, a cold drink from the fridge or go to the bathroom during the drive. You aren’t missing out on much. After the arrival we have a short meeting about the last day and the upcoming stage. The plan is known by everyone already since the DS comes to each room the night before to discuss it. So the meeting is just a short summary of important points. After the race we drive to the next hotel. We have a massage to boost the recovery and our team chef makes sure we get an amazing dinner. He prepares every meal we eat. With good food, the mood stays on a high almost automatically. My favourite main dish was gnocchi with tomato sauce and a savoury mushroom muffin as starter. I can’t decide my favourite dessert, so a chocolate brownie and cinnamon roll have to share first place. Taking care of the right fuelling on and off the bike is very important. I am very happy that the team creates personal plates for us. This means they calculate how many carbs, protein and fat we need beforehand and adjust the plan based on our power file from the race. We don’t need to worry about eating too little or too much and we can just enjoy our served meals.
The second day was a sprint day. Since we only had GC ambitions the goal was just about not losing time, which we accomplished well. Stage three became more of a rollercoaster for us and definitely didn’t go as planned. Nienke, who is an incredible young climber talent and was one of the most important climbing supporters for Juliette, punctured on the bottom of the final climb. We needed to adapt our plan. Francesca then did a bike change with Nienke. She had the intention of helping Nienke to stay close to the bunch, but unfortunately the bike was completely the wrong size. In stressful situation you have to act quickly and sometimes you make a wrong decision. The bike change meant that now Nienke and also Francesca weren’t able to support Juliette at the climb and we had to let our plan go of setting a hard pace from the bottom. In the end, Juliette rode great on the climb and kept close to the GC contenders. But she also learned a painful lesson. Juliette took a bottle with 3k to go and got a penalty of 20 seconds for it, as you aren’t allowed to feed so close to the finish. It’s a silly mistake, but also understandable that it happened as it was a very hot day.
Overheating became an issue for many riders later every stage. We raced in temperatures of around 35 to a maximum of 46 degrees. My highest average temperature was 42 degrees on stage 6. Luckily most hotels had an air conditioner. But we stayed in two hotels with no working air conditioning. One night was so bad that we got a fan to keep some air flow and I used a slightly wet towel as blanket.
On stage 4 we unfortunately lost Becky. She was involved in a big crash the day before. She still fought her way to the finish to be able to try to start stage 4. But halfway through stage 4 she needed to accept that her body wasn’t ready to race. Losing Becky forced us to change our tactics as well again for the upcoming climbing days since she was one of the important climbing support riders. Originally we would have liked to set a hard pace with her on the climbs to make the races hard from the beginning, but now we needed to play it a bit more conservatively.
Stage 7 was the queen stage with 120km and 3700m of elevation. I love big days on the bike, so I personally couldn’t have wished for a better birthday present. It was clearly a GC day, so after leading out Juliette into the climb I rode up the climb as easily as possible. Juliette suffered as never before. She did a very good ride, but unfortunately we didn’t move up on GC like we had hoped. So our plan “failed.”
But it’s never over until it’s over. The last day was a big GC battle between Trek and SD Worx – Protime since Longo Borghini only led the GC at 1 second in front of Kopecky. We sat 5th in GC, so we changed our goal of a GC win to a stage win. If someone would have told me that I was the one, who was able to race for the win, I would have said they were confusing me with someone else. But the GC battle led to a very attacking first part of the race and eliminated all support riders of SD Worx -Protime, except of Fisher-Black. I just tried to survive the first 60kms of nearly only climbing and surprised myself with being able to hang on. After the long climbs, it was time to attack and Juliette and I tried to break away. I was the lucky one who could go clear in a small group of 3 and we made it to the finish. The finish was unfortunately uphill and I simply had no kick left against the other two. I’m disappointed about missing out a win for sure, but at the same time I am stoked about third place.
As you can see, a stage race is full of surprises and demands a lot flexibility. Some disappointments can open up different opportunities. The key to success is the atmosphere in the team. If we can’t accomplish the plan, it’s important to not lose hope and optimism. And with the amazing group of riders in my team, we never lacked a good vibe.
I hoped you enjoyed these background infos and it made you excited for the next races!
Franzi
