Noemi Cantele wins Stage 1, Giro Trentino Donne

Cantele at the World Championships,
2009

Many fans will have been concerned that the organiser's decision to adopt an unusually flat parcours might make for a less interesting Giro Trentino Donne this year - an especial worry when the race has already been shortened from three days to two due to financial problems as reduced interest might very well spell the end of the 19-year-old race. However, in any form of cycling the personalities and riding styles of those who take part count towards the overall success of a race, and when you have riders such as the ones in this event it's never going to be boring.

The peloton stayed together up the first climb, but numerous riders were visibly restless and waiting for their chance at launching a breakaway attempt. A group of 18 got away shortly after the climb and AA Drink-Leontien.nl's Sharon Laws and Emma Pooley accompanied by GreenEDGE's Judith Arndt wasted no time in splitting off from them to form a lead group with Laws briefly riding ahead solo, though there was a good bit of tit-for-tat as riders swapped places and found their positions. Sadly, the race ended after just 15km for Rochelle Gilmore - the Faren-Honda rider later reported that she'd already had too much for "ones head, legs & bike to cope with" after both her original and replacement bike developed problems.

Before too long the race had settled into three groups - Pooley, Noemi Cantele (Be Pink) and Linda Villumsen (GreenEDGE) with a 49" advantage over a chasing group of 15, then the main field some 2' back. The times varied and a few riders came and went from the chase group, but this arrangement characterised the majority of the rest of the stage. Pooley was the fastest rider through the first and second intermediate sprints with Villumsen and Cantele taking second and third place in the first, then switching positions in the second. A few kilometres on they upped the pace, building their lead over the chasers to 1'42" and putting more than three minutes between themselves and the main group, who responded by speeding up just as Luisa Tamanini (Faren-Honda) made an unsuccessful bid to bridge from chasers to lead. Rossella Ratto (Verinlegno-Fabiani), Olga Zabelinskaya (RusVelo), Alexandra Burchenkova (S.C. Michela Fanini Rox), Malgorzata Jasinska (MCipollini-Giambenini-Gauss) and Charlotte Becker (Specialized-Lululemon) had more luck, clawing their way to the leaders not long before the race entered its final 25km - which immediately made the outcome far less easy to predict, many people deciding Becker was a good bet.

Emma Pooley's solo attack with 4km to
go was the highlight of the race, even if
ultimately unsuccessful

Most of the chasers apparently decided there was little point in carrying on now; many of them dropped back to join the main group who were now 4'07" behind the leaders, so with 15km to go it was obvious that the contenders had been narrowed down to eight riders. They were still together at 10km to go with no obvious signs of splitting, at which point the last few chasers gave up the fight and accepted what was now inevitable.

Pooley was the first to go, launching a daring attack 4km from the line and looking for a few moments like she might just pull it off, but she'd apparently over-estimated her reserves and was rapidly caught. Even now it remained unclear how the finish would play out - was it going to be a bunch sprint or would there be more attacks? Pooley tried again with 800m to go, but in the end the group went with the first option, all kicking off together and fighting hard for the line; Cantele turned out to be the fastest by just centimetres. It was a thrilling end to a superb stage, proof that this race has a great future if it survives these difficult times - so get your wallet out, Pat McQuaid.

Tomorrow, the riders have two stages. The first consists of four laps of a 15.7km road parcours at Sarnonico followed by a 5km individual time trial.

Guide - Stage 1 - Stage 2a - Stage 2b

Top Ten

  1.  Noemi Cantele Be Pink 2h32'33"

  2.  Linda Villumsen GreenEDGE ST

  3.  Malgorzata Jasinska MCipollini-Giambenini-Gauss ST

  4.  Charlotte Becker Specialized-LululemoN ST

  5.  Alexandra Burchenkova S.C. Michela Fanini Rox ST

  6.  Olga Zabelinskaya RusVelo ST

  7.  Emma Pooley AA Drink-Leontien.nl ST

  8.  Rossella Ratto Verinlegno-Fabiani ST

  9.   Sharon Laws  AA Drink-Leontien.nl +3'27"

  10.   Greta Treier   S.C. Michela Fanini Rox  ST

Photos: The Break - Cantele, Villumsen, Pooley - Cantele wins - Full results - Podium - Photoset
(With thanks to Sarah Connolly for mentioning the "personalities over parcours" concept!)

Giro Trentino Donne

Trentino is a nice and simple sort of race - there's a 98km road race from Trento to Mezzolombardo with a couple of small climbs and a sprinty finish to start things off today, then tomorrow riders complete four laps of a 15.7km at Sarnonico in the morning before competing against the clock in a 5km individual time trial starting at Romeno and heading back into Sarnonico in the afternoon. It used to extend over three days but, like so many races, has suffered serious financial setbacks over the last couple of years.

What complicates matters is that the race falls so close to the start of the last Grand Tour in women's cycling, the Giro Donne, which means it's prime opportunity to get in some valuable extra race training and - most importantly - have a good look at one another's form. In fact, Trentino organisers are so used to their race being used in this way that they even seem to alter the route to reflect the Giro Donne parcours: in most years, the climbers come here while the sprinters go to RaboSter in the Netherlands; this year the Giro Donne is notably less mountainous than usual and so is Trentino, so a few riders who tend to specialise more in the sprints are here this year.

Because the race is so useful for the Giro Donne, many of the top names show up on the start line and what would in all likelihood have been a relatively unimportant weekender becomes a 2.1 designated race of considerable prestige. Past winners Judith Arndt (GreenEDGE, won 2011), Emma Pooley (AA Drink-Leontien.nl, won 2010), Nicole Cooke (Faren-Honda, won 2009) and Fabiana Luperini (Faren-Honda, won 2008 and 2002) are all in attendance, but victory is far from guaranteed for any one of them - their teams and others have sent along strong squads consisting of fast riders able to hold their own in a sprint and in a great many cases very capable of snatching a win from under the big guns' noses. (Start list here)

Other than that climb in the first 15km and the two little blips between 35-50km, it's a very flat parcours. This means that breakaways are likely - with so many teams sending very strong riders in addition to their leaders, there's a good chance we'll see several attempts firing off the front of the peloton within the first few kilometres and certainly by the end of the first descent. If they prove unsuccessful, others will replace them and, sooner or later, one of them will get away. Whether they can keep going to the end or whether the peloton will chase them down remains to be seen, but a group of strong riders working together will have a very good chance.

Following the race: there's no live ticker for this one, which is rather disappointing considering the importance of the race but probably to be expected considering the organisation's economic woes. It's much easier to keep track of RaboSter, but some sort of Trentino commentary should be available on Twitter. fans will be retweeting any scraps of information they find - check hashtags #Trentino and #womenscycling and see what's on offer. I'll be retweeting anything I can find - @cyclopunk.

Guide - Stage 1 - Stage 2a & Stage 2b