The champion's title was decided long before the finish line - when the Dutch favourite, Demi Vollering, successfully escaped the peloton. Poland's Katarzyna Niewiadoma-Phinney finished trailing the winner by 00:01:18 - and secured second place just before the finish line, overtaking another Dutchwoman, Anna van der Breggen, on the final stretch.
The 31-year-old Polish cyclist from Ochotnica Górna in the southern mountainous Podhale region, had already won her third medal at the European Championships - an event with a relatively short history. Interestingly, all of her medals came in France, as she won the previous two in Brittany.
In 2016, at the first edition of the Elite European Championships in Plumelec, Niewiadoma-Phinney won silver, losing only to... van der Breggen. In 2020, she took bronze in Plouay, finishing behind Dutchwoman Annemiek van Vleuten and Italian Elisa Longo Borghini.
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Source: IAR, PAP, weszlo.com