Women's Ronde van Vlaanderen: post-race fun!

I'll start with a pre-emptive apology - we get a lot of the post-race info from the women's racing in little bits & pieces, so this is likely to be edited as more turns up.  But the results are right (hopefully!) - and as we find video, photos and more info, they'll be added to the comments - and if you see any, please add too!

The race was fast from the word go, and it seems that at 40km they were still all together (except for all the shelled riders!) but by 60km the race was split up into lots of small groups.  There must have been a lot of little attacks, but the biggest one was when, at the 85km mark, Nederland Bloeit's Sarah Düster escaped with Lotto's Ludivine Henrion.  With around 30km to go, their gap had reached 1 minute on TopSport's Lieselot Decroix, and threee minutes on a chase group of 17 that apparently was being lead by Emma Pooley at one point (Emma is a tiny little mountain goat/breakaway queen, who no one expects to excel on the cobbles).

Their monster effort was doomed, though, and they were caught just 2km from the finish-line - and it looked like the race would end with a bunch sprint, until right at the end, Nederland Bloeit Annemiek van Vleuten escaped for the win, taking her first World Cup, and the lead in the overall, with Gauss' Tatiana Antoshina following her for second.  Marianne Vos, proving that the best preparation for riding the cobbles is winning Track World Cup titles the week before, won the chasing group's sprint for 3rd.

1.   Annemiek van Vleuten (Ned) Nederland Bloeit
2.   Tatiana Antoshina (Rus) Gauss
3.   Marianne Vos (Ned) Nederland Bloeit
4.   Emma Johansson (Swe) Hitec UCK
5.   Judith Arndt (Ger) HTC-Highroad
6.   Joelle Numainville (Can) Tibco
7.   Grace Verbeke (Bel) TopSport Vlaanderen
8.   Ludivine Henrion (Bel) Lotto Hinda
9.   Noemi Cantele (Ita) Garmin-Cervélo
10. Emma Pooley (Gbr) Garmin-Cervélo

More info and photos below the jump - and as ever, add anything you find to the comments!

UPDATE: Women's VDS after today after the jump. New leader is majope. Congratulations!

Full results: WVDS110403

So if you want to know what kind of race it was, check out Monty's race preview - and some fun photos seen on twitter:

Liz Hatch's pic of the Düster-Henrion break

Wiggys-from-twitter was at the race, and posted two photos of the women's race going past on a cobbled climb - here and here

NOS sports photo of Van Vleuten's win

More to follow - and thanks, as always, to Diadora's DS, Manel Lacambra, for all the in-race updates!

WOMEN'S VDS TOP 20