Lidl-Trek’s ambitions for the Tour de France Femmes took a huge hit on Saturday when team leader Elisa Longo Borghini announced on social media that a training crash will force her to miss the race, which starts Monday.
Longo Borghini said the crash didn’t leave her with any fractures, but she left a “lot of skin on the road and I really can’t ride my bike.” She’ll be replaced by Elizabeth Deignan in Lidl-Trek’s lineup. But the move leaves the team without one of its top riders and its leader for the general classification.
Longo Borghini won July’s Giro d’Italia Women with a gutsy, wire-to-wire performance where she took the lead on the opening time trial but never held more than a few seconds lead on a field that included SD Worx-Protime phenom Lotte Kopecky. She eked out the final victory by the narrowest of margins – just 21 seconds on the final day – after Kopecky had narrowed it to a single second on stage 7 as they sprinted for the line in a small group on the Blockhaus summit finish.
With the versatile Italian veteran out, Lidl-Trek still has a deep and talented roster for the TdFF and will likely turn to Shirin van Anrooij and Gaia Realini for the overall, and can hunt stages with a variety of riders including Deignan, Elisa Balsamo and time trial talent Ellen van Dijk. But Longo Borghini’s loss throws their careful plans into disarray and is hardly the way they wanted to go into the biggest race of the year.
For Longo Borghini herself, it’s a devastating turn of events in what has been one of her best seasons ever, with a win in the Tour of Flanders, the Giro victory, and podium finishes in the Tour de Suisse and Vuelta a España Femenina. Her return to competition is not yet known.
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