With a tremendous sprint, the Italian Marta Bastianelli won today in Glasgow (Great Britain) the title of Women’s Elite Road European Champion.
The Italian, World Champion in 2007, beat the current Champion, the Dutch rider Marianne Vos and the German Anna Brennauer.
The race (9 laps of a 14.4 kilometres circuit in Glasgow city centre) was very fast paced and many attacks were made especially by the Dutch, British, German and Italian riders. The biggest breakaway was lead by Sophie Wright (Great Britain) who lead the race alone for almost forty kilometres before being caught up by the peloton about 5 laps from the finish.
In the last two laps, the Dutch national team imposed a good pace, especially the World Champion Chantal Blaak who attacked immediately after the group had caught up Wright, together with Elena Cecchini (Italy) and Alice Barnes (Great Britain).
The peloton reacted and nearly twenty kilometres from the finish the Olympic Champion winner of the first Elite European title in 2016, Anna Van der Breggen (Netherlands) broke away with the Olympic bronze medallist Elisa Longo Borghini (Italy), caught up shortly after by the former Team Pursuit Olympic Champion (London 2012), the Briton Danielle Rowe.
In the final, only Van der Breggen and Longo Borghini stayed in the lead, but they were caught up by the group of chasers approximately one kilometre from the finish. The race was won in a closely fought out sprint with a very compact Dutch national team which broke away with the current Champion Marianne Vos, who was unable to overcome Marta Bastianelli, who easily beat Vos and the German Lisa Brennauer, winner yesterday evening at the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome of the Individual Pursuit gold medal.
The Road race progamme will resume on Wednesday 8 August with the Time-Trial races and next Sunday with the Men’s Road race.
Here are the countries and TV channels that have included cycling in their programmes: Belgium (RTBF & VRT), Croatia (HRT), Cyprus (CyBC), Denmark (DR), Estonia (ETV), Finland (YLE), Iceland (RUV), Ireland (RTE), Netherlands (NOS), Norway (NRK), Poland (TVP), Portugal (RTP), Slovenia (RTVSLO), Spain (TVE), Sweden (SVT), Switzerland (SSR), Turkey (TRT), France (FTV), Germany (ARD & ZDF), UK (BBC), Italy (RAI), Eurosport Europe, Eurosport Pan-Asia. FloSports (USA)
Info #EuroRoad18 – click here
Website European Championships Glasgow 2018: https://www.glasgow2018.com/
