Was this the best women’s Classics campaign ever?

Adam Becket

News editor at Cycling Weekly, Adam brings his weekly opinion on the goings on at the upper echelons of our sport. This piece is part of The Leadout, a newsletter series from Cycling Weekly and Cyclingnews. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. As ever, email adam.becket@futurenet.com - should you wish to add anything, or suggest a topic.

It is almost beyond cliché to say that women’s cycling is more exciting than its male counterpart. However, the reason for the cliché is that it is invariably true. This was true more than ever this Classics season, where there were all-time classic races (sorry) at the women’s Liège-Bastogne-Liège, Paris-Roubaix Femmes, the Tour of Flanders, while the men’s equivalents were all but decided more than an hour from the finish.

These spectacles deserve better than comparison between genders however; it is enough to say that the women’s Classics season was the best that I’ve ever watched and leave it at that. In Grace Brown (FDJ-Suez), Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM), Lotte Kopecky (SD Worx-Protime), Elisa Longo Borghini (Lidl-Trek) and more, these races had deserving champions.

Crucially, one of the reasons this campaign was so good was that it did not go as expected. Last year, SD Worx won pretty much everything between Strade Bianche and Liège, with the notable exceptions of the Trofeo Alfredo Binda and Paris-Roubaix, and so it was not unreasonable to think that we would get more of the same in 2024.

However, thanks to inspired racing from other teams - who seemingly worked out that they could challenge them - and Demi Vollering not being at her 2023 best, there were openings for other riders and teams to challenge them.

What made the racing so exciting was the lack of control, the inability of one team, like SD Worx, or Lidl-Trek, to stamp their authority on a race, and therefore many of the events were live right to the end. Paris-Roubaix Femmes saw a six rider group enter the velodrome; Liège-Bastogne-Liège was contested in the end by a six rider group too, with practically all results still open. You couldn’t look away.

Even races - like La Flèche Wallonne - which on paper could have been dull, were lively affairs, with attacks flying all the way to the end on the Mur de Huy. Riders exhausted themselves  trying, instead of just  just quietly surviving, and this was the theme of the Classics. Niewiadoma’s first win after 30 podium places was an extraordinary story, but was just one of many in this non-stop spring.

At the Amstel Gold Race, what probably should have been a routine sprint win for Lorena Wiebes turned into triumph for Marianne Vos (Visma-Lease a Bike), as she pipped her compatriot as she was celebrating early. The thrills were unending. 

What struck me most was the refusal to just give up, displayed by some riders. When Pfeiffer Georgi (dsm-firmenich PostNL) was off the back of the lead group with 16km to go at Roubaix, she could have understandably decided that the race was not for her, but she battled back to the front, and ended up out-sprinting Vos for third.

Likewise, Brown’s victory at Liège came from the Australian’s refusal to accept defeat. She was in the mid-race break, survived, missed a corner with 7.3km to go, and still managed to chase back to the front. When Longo Borghini launched her sprint, others would have been down and out, but Brown was able to power past her with the last of her energy. It was special.

The anarchy on the road made the racing a thrilling experience for the fan, even as much of it was not shown on the the TV - the lack of comprehensive coverage still lets down these cycling greats - but the bits we did see were enthralling. 

With most of the races now on after the men’s races rather than before, or on a separate day - as in the case of Roubaix - these events can now be appreciated without distraction, and with more people watching. This is only a good thing, just give us more.

While Mathieu van der Poel and Tadej Pogačar seemed to put in extended training sessions, how close the women’s races were was a great advertisement for the sport. In the absence of one dominant team, or one dominant rider, riders of similar abilities slugged it out across the Classics. I just wish I could watch it all again now.

This piece is part of The Leadout, the offering of newsletters from Cycling Weekly and Cyclingnews. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here.

If you want to get in touch with Adam, email adam.becket@futurenet.com.