Strade Bianche does not need much encouragement to become frantic, but this year’s women’s race found new ways to turn the screw. Across 133 kilometres from Siena back to Siena, the peloton was forced into a constant fight for position from the first gravel sector, and the decisive group was shaped as much by misfortune as by form.
At the end of it, Elise Chabbey took the biggest road win of her career, striking at exactly the moment the favourites hesitated and the streets narrowed. Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney was second after doing much of the late forcing, Franziska Koch made it a double podium for FDJ United-SUEZ in third, and Elisa Longo Borghini had to settle for fourth.
The race might have read very differently on paper, because Demi Vollering arrived as defending champion and the most obvious favourite. But a puncture and then a wrong turn, taken by a chase group following a race motorbike, removed Vollering, Lotte Kopecky and Pauline Ferrand-Prévot from contention and left the finale to those who had survived the chaos without paying that extra price.
The opening hour is already a fight for survival, not a warm-up
Strade Bianche Women has a habit of igniting early, and this edition leaned into that identity. With gravel arriving quickly and the tempo high on every approach, the peloton never enjoyed a stable rhythm. Small splits appeared, regrouped, and then split again as riders tried to anticipate the next sector rather than react to it.
That constant churn mattered. It drained teams, thinned the list of helpers, and ensured that when the real moves landed later, there were fewer riders with the legs, and the teammates, to repair mistakes.
Photo Credit: GettySan Martino in Grania turns tension into selection
The longest and highest-rated gravel sector, San Martino in Grania, was the first true point of no return. The pace through the sector, and crucially across its rises and dusty descents, forced a hard selection and left a reduced front group in control of the race.
From there, the dynamic shifted. Instead of a bunch with multiple plans, the race became a series of attacks inside a shrinking group, where every acceleration carried the threat of permanent separation.
FDJ United-SUEZ show numbers, then the race rips their script apart
FDJ United-SUEZ were one of the strongest collective presences in the reduced front group, and they rode like a team that had come to impose a plan. Chabbey was active, Koch was positioned, and Vollering looked set to play the final card when the roads turned steep and rough.
Then the race flipped. On the first passage of Le Tolfe, Vollering punctured at the worst possible time. It was the kind of moment that usually forces a favourite into damage limitation, but she did what favourites do, she kept chasing, kept believing, and tried to turn bad luck into a survivable deficit.
It should have been the low point. It was not.
Photo Credit: GettyThe wrong turn that changes everything
With around 33 kilometres to go, the chase group containing Vollering, Kopecky and Ferrand-Prévot followed a race motorbike onto the wrong road and rode off-course. The instinct to follow the vehicle in front is powerful in a high-speed, high-stress situation, and the mistake was only recognised once they had committed to the wrong line.
By the time the group was guided back onto the route, they had lost too much time and too much position. In practical terms, it removed several of the race’s headline favourites from the tactical battle at the front. The win was no longer something Vollering could fight for, it became something she could only listen to over race radio and hope her teammates could salvage.
FDJ, suddenly, had to race a different race.
Longo Borghini and Niewiadoma try to make it a two-woman duel
With the favourites behind neutralised by circumstance, the front group became a cage fight of repeated attacks. Longo Borghini and Niewiadoma were the most consistent aggressors, testing each other on the steep ramps and trying to force a split that would survive all the way to Siena.
Puck Pieterse briefly looked capable of inserting herself into that duel, matching the rhythm when the pace surged, then paying for it when the repeated changes of speed began to bite. Marianne Vos, racing into form, remained present deep into the finale but could not respond when the last kilometre demanded pure punch.
Chabbey, meanwhile, was doing the clever thing, surviving the hard moments, choosing when to spend, and keeping herself close enough that if the final came down to timing rather than raw force, she could pounce.
Chabbey wins Siena in the corners, not just on the climb
The final approach into Siena is where Strade Bianche becomes both brutal and tactical. The Via Santa Caterina climb hurts everyone, but the race is often decided after it, in the narrow bends and the short drop into the Piazza del Campo where speed through corners is as valuable as power.
Niewiadoma and Longo Borghini attacked and fought for position, each trying to be first into the key turn. Koch came around the outside, and the trio’s battle for the front forced them to brake harder than they wanted. That tiny hesitation was the opening Chabbey needed.
She carried more speed into the corner, came through with momentum, and once she was ahead there was no space and no time to come back around. It was a win built on timing, nerve, and the ability to stay composed when everyone else was on the limit.
Behind, Koch’s third place completed FDJ United-SUEZ’s remarkable rescue job, turning a day that could have collapsed after Vollering’s bad luck into a major team statement.
Photo Credit: LaPresseVollering finishes far back, but FDJ still leave Tuscany in control
Vollering rolled in well down the results, a finish that tells you nothing about her legs and everything about how quickly Strade Bianche punishes incidents. Kopecky and Ferrand-Prévot were similarly removed from the outcome by circumstances rather than form.
But the lasting image of the day was FDJ United-SUEZ adapting. When their leader was taken out by a puncture and wrong-turn drama, they did not fold. They raced forward through Chabbey and Koch, read the finale better than their rivals, and turned chaos into a win.
2026 Strade Bianche Women result
Results powered by FirstCycling.com
Main photo credit: Getty
