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Elisa Longo Borghini wins Trofeo Oro in Euro, Puck Pieterse fifth behind four (!) UAE Team ADQ riders

Elisa Longo Borghini wins Trofeo Oro in Euro, Puck Pieterse fifth behind four (!) UAE Team ADQ riders

Elisa Longo Borghini has claimed victory at the Trofeo Oro in Euro. In the finale, she rode solo away from a lead group of five, which included three teammates from UAE Team ADQ and Puck Pieterse.

The day after Strade Bianche Donne, the women's peloton raced again in Italy. The Trofeo Oro in Euro, won last year by Karlijn Swinkels, featured exactly the same route as in 2025. This meant a long flat approach, followed by two climbs of the Fortezza (3.5 km at 5.3%), and then just under fifteen kilometers to the finish line.

UAE Team ADQ sets the pace
The first part of the race saw little action, but once on the Fortezza the race exploded. UAE Team ADQ pushed hard from the base of the climb and shattered the peloton. Especially when Elisa Longo Borghini increased the pace, riders were dropped one by one.

At one point, the front group was down to just five riders, four (!) of whom were from the Emirati team. Only Puck Pieterse managed to hang on with Longo Borghini, Swinkels, Silvia Persico, and Dominika Włodarczyk. The five initially worked well together, but eventually the UAE Team ADQ quartet began to play their strategic game. They tried to wear Pieterse down with successive accelerations.

Pieterse fends off attacks
However, Pieterse refused to be pushed around. The Alpecin-Premier Tech rider successfully countered the attacks by staying highly alert. The UAE Team ADQ riders realized they weren’t going to shake off the Dutchwoman so easily and decided to resume normal rotations. Thus, the group headed at full speed toward the second climb of the Fortezza. The chasing group, including Noemi Rüegg, Urška Žigart, Paula Blasi, and Dutch rider Maya Kingma, had no chance of catching back up.

On the Fortezza, Longo Borghini attacked again. This time Pieterse had no answer. She did manage to pull away from Persico and Włodarczyk, but after the climb the Italian and Pole caught back on. They would battle for second place, as Longo Borghini was no longer reachable. The UAE Team ADQ leader soloed convincingly to the win.

UAE also takes second, third, and fourth
Behind Longo Borghini, Swinkels crossed the line in second, Włodarczyk came in third, and Persico fourth. Pieterse had to bow to UAE’s dominance and finished fifth.