2011 in Review: Best Moment women's racing

and the way they used the Vos-Van Vleuten tag team at RvV – and Plouay! When the video did finally kick in, I loved that!

For me, those Giro mountain duels between Vos and Pooley were spectacular – and the stage where Nicole Cooke solo-ed to victory, looking like she was riding on sheer will-power was one of the most emotional moments. I’m not the biggest fan of Cooke, but that moment brought tears to my eyes, the way she crossed the line (it was a huge shame the horrible crash behind her marred what should have been nothing but greatness)

CyclingFever have been doing a fantastic job, collecting everything they find – thanks so much, I love it!

it’s quite hard to look past that perfectly executed bit of team tactics at Plouay.

I also Nicole’s Giro Donne: not just the win itself but the determination with which she had several attempts at getting away before – rather sneakily – she finally managed it. She obviously felt that stage had her name on it & I loved how many people there were at the finish in Verona. But I also think that awful crash took the edge off it.

Perhaps my favourite Giro Donne stage was the Pooley-Vos duel on an up & down course in glorious weather through some lovely campagna marchigiana in stage 3, Vos finally getting away on the last descent & battling to stay there up a tough final climb into Fermo to take the stage, pretty much collapsing over the finish line. If youdidn’t see it, do. Here it is.

and not one of the more visible teams.

…great moments in the Giro Donne (which was probably the race I enjoyed most in 2011, come to think of it) that narrowing it down to just one is tricky. I’d go down the usual route of picking a Vos victory, but that doesn’t really narrow it down much because she wins so many races. Then there was Clara Hughes showing the kids how to ride a breakaway in the Worlds, every race involving Emma Pooley, Lucy Garner taking the Junior title and so many others (this year, I’ve really understood why some people find women’s racing more interesting than men’s).

Instead, I’ll pick Stage 5 of the Giro. That’s partly because I like Nicole Cooke despite the slighlty embarrassing “Pooley and Cervelo keep ganging up on me” tantrum (three reasons – her excellent palmares, her obvious intelligence and she’s Welsh) and partly because it was such a superb way to leave that large part of the cycling press that had written her off after her illness and seemed to think that she’d had her day in no doubt that they were very wrong – though I could never quite work out why they thought that, since her 2010 results and second place in the 2011 British RR champs were perfectly reasonable by anyone’s standards.

“Marianne Vos completely rides herself to the ground to set up Van Vleuten’s race-winning attack so that’s my nominee”

That too was an amazing moment, showing that despite it all Vos will still ride for someone else.

“If it had been Jens Voigt or Fabian Cancellara doing something similar it would have been the basis for stories we would tell the grandkids”

At least several people here will do!

It’s that niceness combined with superb ability that makes me like her so much – she wins races all the time, but you don’t get any sense of arrogance or posturing whatsoever from Vos. That’s what I liked about Andy Schleck too, but he doesn’t seem quite as nice as he used to do.

You need live images to appreciate the races and to get to know the riders better. At least I do.
I try to motivate myself to follow this more closely, but I always end up only watching the road and cross worlds.

I can’t wait for the 2012 women’s season to get going. It’s going to be a vintage year.