It’s over. Elisa Longo Borghini defied (my) expectations and closed out her Giro win on Stage 8 with a dominating performance to distance the incredibly powerful Lotte Kopecky and win by 21 seconds overall. Here are three takeaways from the race that ended just yesterday:
- An eight stage Grand Tour just ain’t that grand. The Paris Olympics have turned the women’s season upside down and shaken it, including this Giro, cut from ten stages down to eight. The upshot of that is that the winning margin was less than half-a-minute. Eight days just isn’t enough to impose significant, attritional losses and see time gaps open up. Going into the final stage Long Borghini had a one second lead over Kopecky, and the fact that she put a further 20 seconds or so into the World Champion is impressive, but Kopecky ought not be this close in a Grand Tour. She’s a big, strong rider, supremely well-suited to one day races. More stages and more climbing were needed for the race to live up to its responsibilities.
- Longo Borghini and Lidl-Trek coming good. – I ought to have swapped point one and point two here, because Elisa Longo Borghini rode out of her skin over the eight stages. I thought her teammate Gaia Realini might win the overall, being the purer climber, but Longo Borghini held her nerve and showed why she was the rightful team leader. The Italian has been a bit of an also-ran over the past two seasons, but in 2024 she has really come good with wins here and the Tour of Flanders, as well as a 2nd place at Liege-Bastogne-Liege and 3rd in the Vuelta. I wondered who would step up to challenge Demi Vollering (not at this Giro) for the top of the women’s cycling pyramid, and it’s Elisa Longo Borghini.
- The peloton rising. – Team SD Worx (Demi Vollering, Lotte Kopecky, Lorena Wiebes, Niamh Fisher-Black) dominated proceedings last year, with the occasional interference of Annemiek van Vleuten in her farewell season. This go round, the rest of the peloton is stepping up its game. You could see it in early season results and now that we’re in full summer, the number of riders and teams capable of winning races is only increasing. Canyon-SRAM with Kasia Niewiadoma, Elisa Chabbey and Neve Bradbury (3rd at this Giro) are right in the mix, along with Longo Borghini’s Lidl-Trek squad and Team DSM–Firmenich PostNL with Juliette Labous and Pfeiffer Georgi. With no single, dominant team, it’s as good a time as ever to watch the women race.
If you missed the race, here’s some video from the last two stages to show you what you missed: