Cycling
Australian Grace Brown (FDJ-SUEZ) won Liège-Bastogne-Liège. In a sprint with a small group of top favorites, she proved stronger than Longo Borghini and Demi Vollering. World champion Lotte Kopecky had to let the favorites ride and did not participate for the victory.
After fifty kilometers Sarah Gigante left for an adventure and continued to steam ahead undisturbed. Behind her a group formed with Mischa Bredewold, Lucinda Brand, Eva Van Agt, Elise Chabbey, Mikayla Harvey, Grace Brown and Flora Perkins. Those seven were eventually able to catch Gigante, but the Australian put herself at the back of the leading group, which was also joined by Julie Bégo, the French junior world champion. The lead over the peloton – including the favorites Elisa Longo Borghini, Marianne Vos, Demi Vollering, Katarzyna Niewiadoma and Lotte Kopecky – was just under two minutes.
The leading group saw its lead shrink considerably and fell apart. Chabbey, Brown and Cadzow tried again, but just under ten kilometers before the finish the merger was a fact. Longo Borghini, Chabbey, Brown, Cadzow, Vollering and Niewiadoma would fight for victory in Liège-Bastogne-Liège.
Niewiadoma crossed the finish line one and a half kilometers before providing the Italian champion Long Borghini with a perfect lead-out. But that turned out not to be enough for the victory, because Brown remounted Longo Borghini and completely washed away the disappointment of recent years – she already finished second twice in La Doyenne. Vollering was ‘the best of the rest’.
Brown recorded her second victory this season, after being crowned national time trial champion in early January. She is also vice world champion in that discipline. The winner of the 2020 Brabantse Pijl has reached twenty victories in her career. In Liège, she narrowly missed out on the top prize twice with second places in 2020 (behind Deignan) and 2022 (behind Annemiek van Vleuten).
