Annemiek van Vleuten starts off season with win at Setmana Valenciana

With 2022 under way the women's calendar is on the road and this past week at the Setmana Valenciana there was a lot of action, with Movistar Team's veteran Annemiek van Vleuten bringing back old habits and taking the overall win after dominating the queen stage.

“I can see that the team is stepping up compared to last year. For some of the riders here, it was the first time defending a GC lead. I can see now that my team-mates are getting more and more experienced, having won other similar races like Ardèche, so it’s good to see that the team is more able to defend a jersey and know how to do it," van Vleuten said after the final stage of the Spanish race.

Having won stage three that went up to Vistabella del Maestrat with over a minute over Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig and Marta Cavalli, who went on to finish the race in the final podium alongside the Dutch, van Vleuten stayed safe in the flat stages to confirm her first overall win of 2022.

She went on to describe her surprise over the result, after her last race of the 2021 ended with two fractures on her pubic bone in the cobbles of Roubaix: “If you realize that it’s only four-and-a-half months ago that I crashed so badly in Roubaix, and left only my crutches behind in mid December – to be able to already do this… it’s so nice to start the season this way. It’s also nice to take the pressure off my shoulders, to show that both myself and the team are back. It’s also a Spanish race, which makes it for a bigger goal for the team."

Elisa Balsamo won the opening stage bunch sprint debuting her rainbow colours in 2022, and her teammate Ellen van Dijk won the following day in a two-up sprint alongside Ruby Roseman-Gannon in Gandia. In the final day of racing UAE Team ADQ's Martia Bastianelli was the fastest on the approach to the finish line in Valencia.

Van Vleuten added: “It’s nice to start here in the sun than in classics temperatures, also doing it in a little bit more relaxed way. You can work for four days with the team, keep learning, processing goals – which is important to take lessions for the Giro and the Tour de France. All in all, a great way to start my 2022 season!"

“(Regarding what she wrote on her jersey for today) Our soigneur Gary Baños died one year ago today, so that’s why I had Gary on one arm and then #StayStrongAmy on the other one, for Amy Pieters, who is still in hospital. I just wanted to think of both of them and dedicate my jersey to them," the race winner mentioned, regarding Amy Pieters, who crashed in late December and has since been in a coma due to head injuries.

Van Vleuten will be back to action this weekend at the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad where she will be linking up with Danish Emma Norsgaard, making for a dangerous duo for the classics season: “I look so much forward to racing with Emma in Omloop Het Nieuwsblad! It’s super cool to go with her, with her talent for the sprint and on a route with shorter hills than here, but it’s also nice to be meeting the whole team again so soon and get into the rhythm for the classics.”