{"id":540045,"date":"2026-04-19T22:03:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T22:03:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/540045\/"},"modified":"2026-04-19T22:03:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T22:03:15","slug":"amstel-gold-race-women-recap-uae-team-adqs-paula-blasi-wins-after-22km-solo-breakaway-kasia-niewiadoma-phinney-and-demi-vollering-complete-podium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/540045\/","title":{"rendered":"Amstel Gold Race Women recap \u2013 UAE Team ADQ’s Paula Blasi wins after 22km solo breakaway, Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney and Demi Vollering complete podium"},"content":{"rendered":"

BLASI: I WAS NOT EVEN SUPPOSED TO BE HERE<\/p>\n

\u201dI was alone when I crossed the finish line, I did not even know how many kilometres left I had.<\/p>\n

\u201dI was like, ‘oh hopefully I have just five to go,’ and then suddenly they said ‘no, you still have 22 to go’, and I was like ‘oh’ and I knew it was going to be a hard day in the front.<\/p>\n

\u201dFive minutes before I did the breakout, I was dropped.<\/p>\n

\u201dSo I just came back, and I said ok, let\u2019s give it a go, try to help the team, and then suddenly I found myself in the front.<\/p>\n

\u201dSince the beginning, I said to the team that I was struggling quite a bit with the positioning because it is my first race here in Ardennes, so I was a bit nervous, and it was nothing like I have done before.<\/p>\n

\u201dIt is quite crazy, it is quite difficult to be in the front and that is actually the most important part, so I was struggling a bit.<\/p>\n

\u201dI was way far behind, so I was kind of being dropped, coming back, being dropped, coming back.<\/p>\n

\u201dAt one point I said, ‘be at the front, if you can go in the breakaway, it will be better because then you will not have to fight for the position’.<\/p>\n

\u201dI don\u2019t know actually right now [what it means to win] because I was not even supposed to be here, I just signed up yesterday for the race because we had some injuries and some sickness, so it was not even on my mind to be racing here, so I need to take a breath and accept what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"picture\"<\/p>\n

Image credit: Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BLASI: I WAS NOT EVEN SUPPOSED TO BE HERE \u201dI was alone when I crossed the finish line,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":540046,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-540045","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540045\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/540046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}