Elisa Balsamo has won the Classic Lorient Agglomération, formerly known as the Grand Prix Plouay, for the first time in her sixth appearance.
In a reduced bunch sprint on Boulevard des Championnats du Monde on the outskirts of Plouay, Elisa Balsamo was faster than defending champion Mischa Bredewold after 172.6 kilometres, securing the seventh WorldTour Classic victory of her career.
The 2021 World Champion not only added a new race to her palmarès with her success in Plouay, but also claimed her first professional victory in France — although it was not her first-ever victory in Plouay overall: Exactly six years and three days earlier, “Barzi” had already won the U23 European Championships at the same place.
Balsamo’s second victory in the Breton town was now the crowning achievement of a hugely impressive performance by the entire Lidl-Trek team.
In the early stages, Anna Henderson made it into the seven-rider breakaway of the day, which built up a lead of as much as seven minutes and therefore took the pressure off the rest of the team in the peloton.
On the two final laps around Plouay, each 16.6 kilometres long, Loes Adegeest, Niamh Fisher-Black, Fleur Moors and Margot Vanpachtenbeke controlled the race, allowing no further group to get away and then dictating the race in the finale to set up the sprint.
On the final five kilometres, Fisher-Black and Moors caught Celia Gery and Eleonora Gasparrini, who had escaped on the final climb of Ty-Marrec, before Vanpachtenbeke launched the sprint for Balsamo.
Balsamo then moved into the slipstream of Bredewold, who had launched her sprint early, and eventually came around her to take the victory.
In Elisa’s words:
I need to say a big, big thank you to my team. They did another time an amazing job. When we saw, that I could survive the last climb, we decided to go All-In for the sprint. I am super happy! Honestly, on the last climb I was only watching the wheel in front of me, it was so hard! But then when I still was in the first group, I fully trusted my team and I knew they could close everything.
Photo by Alex Broadway/Getty Images
