The world of competitive cycling has been taken by storm as Grace Bowen rolls into her second world tour win by coming in first at the Vuelta a Burgos Feminas. This has been impressive as the Australian cyclist has stepped the podium 6 times just in the year 2021.
Bowen had not stepped the podium before October of 2020 with an individual win in Europe. She had however stepped the podium in her home country of Australia. The 28 year old athlete broke that barrier in the year 2021 when she rode her way to 6 podium wins.
This tour she won was a 4 day tour. Its 100 kilometers in length brown stated that “It was our plan to attack and try to win the stage, we wanted to put a little bit of pressure on early on in the crosswinds and see if we could split the peloton. My plan then was to hold on until the last climb and then attack as we got to the crest and try to hold onto that until the finish.”
Brown quoted that “Unfortunately they didn’t work a lot with me until the end, Elise Chabbey pulled a few turns and then it was a sprint against them and I got away with it, I knew on a normal day if we had all pulled equal turns then I could probably win the sprint but I was a bit unsure if I had done too much, so I was relieved to win in the end.” Brown was named as a part of the Australian Olympic team in Tokyo this week showed exactly why she deserved that spot when she leapt out of the peloton on that final climb, with just over six kilometres to go, and Elise Chabbey (Canyon-SRAM) quickly jumped onto her wheel. Powerful 20-year-old New Zealand climber, Niamh Fisher-Black (SD Worx), then clawed her way to the leading duo. They established a clear gap but there was little time to pull out enough distance to give the trio much breathing space so Brown kept working and led out the sprint as they closed in on the line.
