In Saturday’s Classic Lorient Agglomération, Elisa Balsamo (Lidl-Trek) won the bunch sprint – but unfortunately for her and the team, it was a sprint for fourth place as Amber Kraak (FDJ-Suez), Chloé Dygert (Canyon-SRAM), and Liane Lippert (Movistar Team) had attacked on the final lap and held off the chasing peloton.
Ahead of the final, Lidl-Trek tried to make it a hard race in order to drop other sprinters, in particular Charlotte Kool (DSM-Firmenich PostNL), who could challenge Balsamo in a sprint. Lizzie Deignan and Elisa Longo Borghini both attacked from the peloton, attempting to form a strong breakaway. Their efforts were unsuccessful, so the team committed Deignan, Longo Borghini, and Lauretta Hanson to chasing down solo escapee Amber Kraak (FDJ-Suez) instead.
They were making inroads into Kraak’s two-minute advantage, and with Kool temporarily dropped from the peloton, things were looking good. As the race entered the last six kilometres, Longo Borghini made one last pull to reel in Kraak, still 15 seconds ahead, while Balsamo was well-positioned on the wheel of Shirin van Anrooij.
Lippert’s attack did not take the team by surprise – Van Anrooij was the second rider to react, right after Mischa Bredewold (SD Worx-Protime) and before Dominika Włodarczyk (UAE Team ADQ) and Dygert. Balsamo followed suit in Dygert’s slipstream.
However, the former German champion’s acceleration up the steep Bosse du Lezot was too much for everyone. Bredewold and Dygert had joined forces, and behind them, Van Anrooij pulled Balsamo, inching ever closer to the duo in front of them – but they could never close the last 10-metre gap and started losing ground again.
When things behind Lippert, Bredewold, and Dygert came back together, forming a chase group of about 20 riders, Van Anrooij was still recovering from her previous all-out effort, and Balsamo had no other teammates left. Movistar Team, SD Worx-Protime, and Canyon-SRAM understandably had no interest in chasing, and as riders looked at each other, the front trio (Bredewold and Dygert had caught Lippert in the meantime) gained the crucial seconds that meant they could stay away.
With a very strong line-up, Lidl-Trek were arguably the team that dominated the race, but the result showed that neither that strength nor a tactic that seemed to be working perfectly until less than 10 minutes from the finish are a guarantee for success in cycling.
