NEWLY crowned Road Cycling World Champion Lizzie Armitstead admits she is struggling to come to terms with fulfilling a lifetime ambition in the women’s race on Saturday.
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With the race now set up for a sprint finish, a cool Armitstead held her nerve as she powered to a half-bike length victory over van der Breggen.
Armitstead quickly clasped her hand over her mouth and burst into tears. “Until the very last, until we caught them [the break], I thought it was over”.
“I was very proud to have been there to see it in person, and in the company of Jonny Clay, now cycle sport and membership director at British Cycling, who spotted Lizzie’s potential when she was still at school in Otley”.
Armitstead had already helped her professional team, Dutch-based Boels-Dolman, to win silver the medal in the team time trial in Richmond.
Silver-medalist Anna Van Der Breggen, left, of the Netherlands, … Van Der Breggen finished in second place and Guarnier was third.
“The peloton was going slower and slower each lap so I think the course was quite demanding and then last five kilometers were challenging and it was all about positioning”. But that didn’t stop attrition from setting in.
Armitstead’s training partner, Tiffany Cromwell of Australia, was the first to make a move as the lead group approached the finale on Broad Street. She was eventually caught, and a cat-and-mouse game ensued among the leaders as they prepared for the sprint finish.
“Anytime Lizzie attacks it’s going to put anybody in the hurt box”, she said. Having come in strongly fancied, she erred at the business end of the race and said ahead of her latest attempt “I don’t want to finish the race with regrets”. “There wasn’t much option”.
Armitstead then attacked up the final climb, with 1km to go, but it wasn’t steep or long enough for her to distance her rivals and a sprint between nine riders consequently followed. But a fast and furious race meant it was no easy task for Armistead, whose victory in the 2015 World Cup series made her a top pre-race contender and a marked favourite. “That was because I had good legs”. You’ve got all that 130km of being totally focused and as soon as you cross the line it takes a few seconds to realise what’s happened.
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Armitstead became only the fourth British woman after Beryl Burton (1960 and 1967), Mandy Jones (1982) and Nicole Cooke (2008) to claim the famous rainbow stripes, and only the sixth Briton of any gender to do so with Tom Simpson (1965) and Mark Cavendish (2011) the only winners on the men’s side.
