Anna van der Breggen (Boels Dolmans) is back to contest the most challenging stage race on the Women's WorldTour: Giro Rosa. She is a former two-time overall champion of the Italian Grand Tour but skipped the race last year to focus on winning the world title in Innsbruck. Speaking with Cyclingnews just a few days ahead of the opening team time trial in Cassano Spinola on July 5, Van der Breggen made no bones about the fact that she is motivated to try and win a third maglia rosa.
"If you can do it two times, you can also do it three times," she said in an interview over the phone. "In a long stage race like this, you need to feel good the whole time and recover well, so I think I will know pretty quickly how everyone is doing. The first stages will be important to see how strong everyone is, and from that point on, you can work further into the race."
Van der Breggen won her Giro Rosa titles in 2015 - ahead of Mara Abbott and Megan Guarnier - and in 2017 - ahead of Elisa Longo Borghini and Annemiek van Vleuten. Van Vleuten is the defending champion and won last year's overall title by an astonishing 4:12 over runner-up Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio and 6:30 over teammate Amanda Spratt.
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Van Vleuten, the individual time trial world champion, recently won the time trial title at the Dutch championships, beating her rivals Ellen van Dijk and Van der Breggen by over a minute-and-a-half along a 30km course. She's 100 per cent focused on the Giro Rosa, has spent several blocks of training at altitude in both Tenerife and Italy, and says she's in prime condition to win a second title in a row.
Despite already winning the race twice, however, Van der Breggen is aware of her pre-race rank as the second-best of the favourites (behind Van Vleuten), and she knows that she will have to fight hard to win a third title. But she's confident that she has the experience, because of her two previous titles, to be in contention. She also said that she's physically well-prepared and pointed to having a strong team to back up her objectives throughout the 10-day race.
"There are many important points to consider; having a strong team, for example, is important at some points, while some days you need to be able to do it yourself," Van der Breggen said, frankly. "You have to try to do the best you can, to recover well, and your teammates are important in making sure that you don't waste energy when you don't need to. Of course, my team will be important.
"Annemiek is the big favourite, and we could see that in the time trial at Nationals - that she is very strong at the moment. That's good, but there are more strong riders in the race this year. You have to prepare yourself as best as possible, everyone on our team has done that, so we will see what we can do together."
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
via Cyclingnews Latest Interviews and Features http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/giro-rosa-anna-van-der-breggen-is-back-to-win-the-maglia-rosa
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