Just as the day before, Charlotte Kool (dsm-firmenich PostNL) could not threaten Lorena Wiebes and her SD Worx-Protime team on the final stage of the RideLondon Classique. Still Kool comfortably beat everyone else to take her second runner-up spot in a row and was still upbeat about her performance in the three-day race.
“I think it was actually a good weekend. I felt way better than in the Vuelta, for example, and I think I’m getting there, so we are going in the right direction,” Kool said after the stage.
Like Wiebes, Kool was also almost involved in a crash on the third of eight laps, and the 25-year-old thanked one of her teammates in particular for keeping her out of trouble after that.
“It was quite chaotic. It was a kind of crash, I was standing still and was clicked out a bit, so it was a bit of a shock that I survived, to be honest. But we came back really quickly. and then Daniek [Hengeveld] did an amazing job keeping us all safe, I was really impressed by what she did.
“In the sprint, they came really fast from behind, so I think, yeah, fair enough,” said Kool.
Although she couldn’t repeat her 2023 stage and overall victories, with Wiebes in a class of her own as she swept up all three stages, Kool enjoyed the stage in the British capital.
“It’s always really special. It’s not often that you can race in the middle of the city of London,” she said.
On each of the three stages, the lead-out from world champion Lotte Kopecky was a vital part of Wiebes’ victories – but the final sprint was a work of art.
In a departure from the usual arrangement, Kopecky was riding on her own, sitting in the seventh row of the peloton with 3km to go, while Wiebes was further forward on the wheel of Barbara Guarischi.
At the flamme rouge, Guarischi had brought Wiebes to Kool’s rear wheel where the star sprinter stayed through the turn onto Spur Road as Guarischi took the inside lane to move herself up into second position on the wheel of Gasparrini.
Guarischi then dove into the turn onto The Mall to take the lead with less than 400 metres to go, and at the same time Kopecky also took the inside lane to get in front of Wiebes without having to spend more energy than necessary.
The world champion immediately started her lead-out from fifth position, passing Kool at the 200-metre mark and making her go after her while Wiebes was still in Kopecky’s slipstream. When Wiebes launched her own sprint, Kool had already made her first kick and the rider, who lost her usual last lead out Rachele Barbieri from the front group earlier in the stage, had nothing left to answer with. Wiebes, therefore, took her third consecutive sprint victory.
“Everything looked really good until we lost Rachele in the lead-out so we missed her,” said dsm-firmenich PostNL coach Kelvin Dekker in a team statement. “I think you can also see that in the last 500 metres that it was the little push that we missed to really fight for the win.
“I think we did as good a job as possible and Charlotte did a good sprint, but we just missed that little bit, so second it is and second on GC. We know what to work on and we’ll build on this.”