Van der Breggen skipping Giro Rosa to race World Cup XCO

Anna van der Breggen will be in Italy when the Giro d’Italia Internazionale Femminile gets underway this weekend, but she won’t be on the start line in Verbania. Instead, the Olympic road race champion and last year’s Giro winner will be a four hour drive east preparing for the Val di Sole World Cup cross country mountain bike race.

Though van der Breggen has won the 10 day stage race, better known as Giro Rosa, twice in the past, in 2015 and last year, the Dutch road racing star earlier this year started discussions with her team about not defending her title. Seeking a new challenge, the current leader of the Women’s World Tour on the road will hit the dirt. She will race the fourth round of World Cup cross country racing, in Trentino, Italy, not that far from where her Boels Dolmans teammates will be starting their Giro campaign in support of Megan Guarnier.

While it may not seem like an obvious direction for the road racer, van der Breggen isn’t a total novice on the XC circuit. She won the Cyprus Sunshine Cup mountain bike stage race as part of her training back in February. The Val di Sole World Cup course is generally regarded as the least technical cross country course on the calendar, so it was the natural choice for her first foray into the XCO series.

While van der Breggen undoubtedly has a race pedigree on par with any rider that will take to the start on Sunday, she has said in an interview with Cyclingnews.com that she does not expect to keep pace with the top riders that focus on cross country racing year round. Instead, her break from the Women’s World Tour calendar is intended to boost the Dutch racers motivation during the long road racing season. Her focus is still squarely on performing her best at world championships in Innsbruck, Austria in September.

Van der Breggen has raced the Giro Rosa ten times, including her two wins, and has said in interviews that the motivation to tackle the Italian stage race an 11th time was waning, even last year. She isn’t the first road rider to turn to cross country for a break from the pavement. Peter Sagan famously skipped the 2016 Olympic road race to compete at the cross country event at the Rio Games.