Annemiek van Vleuten posts impressive Strava time on Col d’Izoard

With 4.5 km to race in La Course, which brought the women’s professional peloton up the Col d’Izoard hours before the men’s Tour de France arrived on the slopes of the 14 km climb, Annemiek van Vleuten attacked to win the race solo.

The 34-year-old Orica-Scott rider put 43-seconds into second-place Lizzie Deignan and when van Vleuten uploaded her ride to Strava it was no surprise to see she earned the QOM on the full Izoard from Les Moulins segment.

More impressively however was her time in those final decisive 5 kilometres during which she put so much time into her rivals. She covered the top of the climb in 15:34 at an average speed of 19.2 kph. That effort gave her the third fastest Strava time on the segment that covered the final 5-km behind only two riders.

Warren Barguil who won Stage 18 of the Tour de France with an impressive attack on the general classification group with just over 6 km to go sits second and Romain Bardet with a time of 13:49 holds the Strava KOM on the segment called last 5 km. Every other rider participating in the Tour who uploaded their ride covered those final 5 km slower than van Vleuten. Granted the riders at the Tour were 18 days deep into one of the hardest bike races in the world. Over 15,000 people have ridden the segment according to Strava.

Bardet finished third on the stage just ahead of the yellow jersey of Chris Froom and Rigoberto Uran. Top-three in the GC finished just behind Darwin Atapuma who rode in the breakaway before going for the stage in on the climb just to get caught by Barguil with 1 km to go .

Van Vleuten walked away with 14 Strava QOMs but unfortunately did not upload any other data than her cadence so her effort cannot be further analyzed. The Strava QOMs are small rewarded as it was the prestigious La Course win that really mattered.