Racing

Letizia Borghesi’s brave ride at Paris-Roubaix Femmes

Italian sprints to 13th. Last year’s champ Alison Jackson set back by crashes

April 6, 2024

Five kilometers from the Roubaix Velodrome, the front of the Hell of the North was 20 seconds up the road.

Letizia Borghesi ducked her head to the side and kicked down through her pedals, marking the sprinters in her group. She’d fought her way back into the race after a chaotic start, which left her teammate, last year’s champion, Alison Jackson behind in a chasing group. Letizia rode onto the track a half lap behind the leaders. She just stuck her elbows out and pushed with all she had left to the line. Her sprint was good for 13th—her best-ever result in a monument.

The Queen of the Classics hadn’t gone to plan for EF Education-Cannondale, but our team rolled with the punches and rode away from the Roubaix velodrome with their heads held high.

‘It was a good performance,” Letizia said on the infield after her sprint. “In the beginning, I dropped my chain and was thinking I was going to be out of the race, but then I kept fighting really hard. I made a huge effort to come back to the first group and then I kept fighting until the finish line.”

Last year’s champion Alison Jackson applauds the grit that Letizia showed in this year’s edition. Her own chances were scuppered by crashes early in the cobbled classic.

“There was a lot of chaos out there today,” she said. “That is how it is. That is exactly what I expected. The wind made it really hard and you had to be in a good position. I always said that if I had a clean run with no mechanicals or crashes I could win. That was what happened last year. This year, I came down twice, got pushed over on some gravel sections. That is why we love and hate this race.”

Letizia sure loves Paris-Roubaix. Once she made it back to the front, she used her cyclocross skills to surf onto each cobbled sector on the wheels of the biggest names in the sport, showing them that she belonged with them, and then gritted her teeth and rattled over the stones.

Those efforts had cost her after 148.5 kilometers and 17 sectors of pavé.

“I was hoping to do a better sprint but the energy was low at the finish and I just couldn’t,” Letizia said, “but it is for sure a big performance that gives me a lot of confidence for the future.”

We’re already looking forward to the next Paris-Roubaix Femmes. First up, is tomorrow’s men’s edition of the monument.

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Paris - Roubaix Femmes
Apr. 06, 2024
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The Queen of the Classics

Letizia Borghesi

Riding bikes is almost a requirement to be in the Borghesi family. Letizia and her younger sister grew up hearing stories from her dad about his wins as a U23 racer and Letizia thought to herself, “I could do that.” She started racing as a 12-year-old and hasn’t looked back. Her parents still ride and you’ll often find them at Letizia’s races, having driven their camper van from their home in the mountains of northern Italy to support their daughter.

In 2022, Letizia earned a pair of top ten finishes in the spring classics. She continued her growth the following season with top ten results in both one-day and stage races. Letizia has raced the Giro-Tour double for the last two years, enjoying demands of back-to-back stage races. Her biggest result to date is her 2019 stage win at the Giro d’Italia where she spent the day in the breakaway before sprinting to the stage win.

Growing up in the mountains of northern Italy, Letizia is happiest when she is outside. She adores her home region of Trentino and you can often find her hiking to the nearby lakes when she’s not training on the road. She earned the silver medal in the 2022 Italian gravel national championships, her first ever gravel race, and has since also raced the gravel world championships. In the off season, Letizia enjoys competing in the local cyclocross races. Given her experience in cyclocross, it’s not a surprise that her favorite races are the cobbled classics because she loves the steep climbs and is used to the harsh weather conditions.

Letizia completed her bachelor’s degree in sports science and she is currently studying for her master’s degree in biology/nutrition.

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Alison Jackson

You’ve seen her dancing on social media, on the podium, and everywhere in between. Alison’s love of movement, whether it’s dancing, riding, or being outdoors, is infectious.

Alison earned the biggest win of her career to date in 2023 when she won Paris-Roubaix from a breakaway that she kept alive from the race’s early kilometers. She followed it up the next month by winning the Canadian road race national championships in her native Alberta. Alison is an Olympian and has raced nine times in the world championships, including a sixth place finish in 2021.

For Alison, winning is important, but it doesn’t matter to her whether she’s atop the podium or if it’s one of her teammates. She’s more interested in making a difference in each race and contributing to the best result possible for the team.

Growing up on her family’s farm in Vermilion, Alberta, Alison had endless opportunities to exhaust her energy by helping with chores or playing with her siblings. But her mother noticed that Alison’s energy never seemed to dwindle, so she signed her daughter up for every sport available in her hometown of 4,000 people. Alison’s curiosity and innate athletic talent led her to pick up swimming, compete provincially in gymnastics, go hiking in the Himalayas, and eventually to pick up an old bike that a former farmhand had left behind on her family’s farm. Fast forward to today and Alison is still driven by that same sense of curiosity, but this time she’s wondering just how far she can push her limits on the bike.

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