Trofeo Alfredo Binda<\/a>. The Italian sprinter proved fastest in Cittiglio after a selective race that reduced the peloton to a small group of contenders. She finished ahead of Blanka Kata Vas and Cat Ferguson. Balsamo, teammate of Isabella Holmgren, won\u2019t be there this year\u2013but her team is stacked.<\/p>\nThe 2025 race was animated earlier by several Dutch riders. Demi Vollering, Puck Pieterse and Anna van der Breggen all launched attacks on the climbs of Orino and Casale, attempting to split the race before the finish. Despite their efforts, the fastest finishers managed to stay in contention, setting up the sprint that ultimately went Balsamo\u2019s way.<\/p>\n
The course<\/p>\n
As tradition dictates, the race starts and finishes in Cittiglio, the hometown of Alfredo Binda. The riders tackle a series of local laps of roughly 18 kilometres, each including the climbs of Orino (2.6 km at 4.9 per cent ) and the steeper Casale ascent (800 metres at 7.1 per cent).<\/p>\n
The route suits punchy, explosive riders. After getting the final climb of Casale, it\u2019s only about 10 km left to the finish in Cittiglio. So if you make the right move\u2026it can work.<\/p>\n
Riders to watch<\/p>\n
Demi Vollering and Anna van der Breggen will not be there on Sunday, but there\u2019s a whole bunch of other riders going for it.<\/p>\n
Canyon-SRAM will look to Katarzyna Niewiadoma to animate the climbs, while Puck Pieterse has also added the race to her schedule and will likely race aggressively. The Felix-Premier Tech rider is always a joy to watch with her animated racing\u2013whether on the dirt or the road, she never gives up.<\/p>\n
These riders will try to break the race apart on Orino and Casale in hopes of dropping the fastest finishers before the run-in to Cittiglio. EF Education-Oatly could also play a role with world champion Magdeleine Vallieres Mill and Noemi R\u00fcegg in their squad. The Sherbrooke Que. rider is already doing just fine in her rainbow kit\u2013she was awesome at Strade Bianche.<\/p>\n
Sprint or break?<\/p>\n
The key question is whether the climbers and attackers can distance the sprinters. If a reduced group arrives together, several fast finishers immediately become dangerous. Riders such as Blanka Kata Vas, Marianne Vos, Mischa Bredewold, Lotte Kopecky, Ally Wollaston, Letizia Borghesi and C\u00e9lia Gery all have the speed to win from a small sprint.<\/p>\n
And then there is Cat Ferguson. The 19-year-old Brit has already collected several impressive victories in 2026 and finished fourth at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad earlier this season. If the race ends in a sprint from a select group, she could very well fight for the biggest win of her career so far.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s also Paris-Nice finishing up, Tirreno-Adriatico\u2026so much bike racing!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Although Oro-Medonte, Ont.\u2019s Ava Holmgren has already started her season in fine form, multiple world champ Isabella has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":536741,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,82],"class_list":["post-536740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=536740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/536741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=536740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=536740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=536740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}