Demi Vollering (FDJ-United-SUEZ) raised her right arm and punched the air as she dropped into the Piazza del Campo to cross the finish line at White Roads. The defending champion and two-time winner was only the 20th rider to cross the line but, despite her own hopes going up in flames, there was a happy ending as she saw her teammate preparing to lift the trophy.
Six minutes earlier, Elise Chabbey had crossed the line with a look of complete shock on her face, landing the biggest win of her career after a complete thriller of a finale and a race as a whole.
What’s more, there were two FDJ riders on the podium, with Franziska Koch getting around Longo Borghini to claim third place.
“I’m so proud of them. We did such a perfect race, really like perfect perfect,” Vollering said.
“I had flat tyre in worst moment ever, but I was like ‘OK I can still come back, never give up, keep pushing’. But then they sent us the wrong way, and actually that moment you saw all the riders were like ‘OK, we’ll never come back’ because all the cars went past, and we were the last in the race, I think. Then it was over. It was a pity for me.”
However, Vollering’s frustration soon turned to optimism as she heard via race radio how much Chabbey was lighting up the final gravel sectors, with Koch well in the mix as well.
“I was so excited in the radio because I could hear there was a big battle. I was like ‘come on girls, don’t give up’.
“Sometimes I tried to tell them something but I think they didn’t understand me. It wasn’t necessary apparently because they did amazing.”
“If you see what they did, the whole day on the front, then on the long gravel sector they pushed the whole way. I was like ‘woah, they’re from a different world today, they’re flying’.”
“We will maybe party all night,” she concluded.
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