In one of the most mountainous world road race championships ever held, and in the absence of Lizzie Deignan – who has just given birth to her daughter, Orla – Saturday’s women’s title race in Innsbruck will give a chance for new British riders to shine. Among them is this year’s shooting star Sophie Wright, the 19-year-old former mountain bike racer who unexpectedly lit up the European championship in Glasgow in August.
The Norfolk rider transferred from the Great Britain mountain bike squad to the road in the spring, having decided she wanted a career in road racing after winning the European junior mountain bike title and two national championships off-road.
She was immediately rewarded with victory in the Tour of the Reservoir national road race series event, but it was the European championship where she truly came to prominence, with a crowd-pleasing 60km escape, largely on her own, that gained her a three-minute lead at one point. Wright did not make the medals in Glasgow, but her move worked as planned, as it paved the way for late attacks from her leader on the day Dani Rowe, who will also be part of the Great Britain team on Saturday.
Her courageous solo effort also earned her a WorldTour professional team place with Cervélo-Bigla, for whom she rode strongly in the recent Tour of Tuscany. It all marks a rapid progression since 2017 when she had two operations to solve a cardiac issue which resulted in her heart beating at up to 256 beats per minute.
“She’s like a coiled spring. It will be exciting to see what her youthful exuberance can achieve on the course,” said the Great Britain women’s road team coach, Julian Winn, who played an influential role in Nicole Cooke’s Olympic gold medal in Beijing and has tracked Wright’s progress since spotting her in a mountain bike event several years ago.
He added: “I don’t want to put pressure on her, I just want to see her have a straightforward race with no mechanicals, and not getting caught behind any crashes. I’m sure she can climb with the best and get in that front group.”
Rowe, meanwhile, will look to build on some promising performances this season, including second in the Tour de Yorkshire, third in the Women’s Tour and bronze in the Commonwealth Games.
On the evidence of the opening days of racing, with fields scattered to the four winds, the course outside Innsbruck is the hardest world championship circuit since the mountainous race in Duitama, Colombia in 1995. It is a relatively long route at 156km but the main circuit, tackled three times by the women, includes the climb of Igls, one of the longest seen in a recent worlds, almost 8km in length with stretches at 10%. There is a 6km flat run from the foot of the descent into the finish but the climb is so long that pure climbers will probably be able to open a decisive gap before then.
While the field includes strong climbers in Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig of Denmark, Amanda Spratt of Australia and the Tour de Yorkshire winner Megan Guarnier, all eyes will be on the Dutch duo Annemiek van Vleuten, the gold medallist in the time trial on Tuesday, and the Olympic champion Anna van der Breggen.
In Glasgow at the European championship the Dutch squad were dominant but rode a tactically disastrous race and were outwitted by the sprinter Marta Bastianelli; in Innsbruck the volume of climbing means that is unlikely to happen again. “On this course you either have good legs or you haven’t,” said Winn. “There will be no tactics.”