Classic Agglomération Trophée Ceratizit preview - Bredewold to make history?

As the season heads towards its closing races, it’s easy to forget the GP Plouay. It’s part of the top tier of women’s racing since its creation in 2002, first as part of the World Cup and now as a Women’s WorldTour race.

That place among the sport’s elite events ensures some of the biggest riders have won it. Think Nicole Cooke, Noemi Cantele, Fabiana Luperini, Emma Pooley, Annemiek van Vleuten and Lizzie Deignan, who is the race’s most prolific winner with three victories.

However, this year we can forget the names of the past, there's enough history on the start list this year, with Marianne Vos (Visma | Lease a Bike), Elisa Longo Borghini (UAE Team ADQ), Anna van der Breggen and her SD Worx-Protime team mate Mischa Bredewold among six previous winners.

Bredewold has won the last two editions, and the Dutch woman could well equal Deignan’s record on Saturday, though for her the feat would be one with a twist. While Deignan's three wins came over six editions, Bredewold would make it three in a row. 

SD Worx-Protime have had a difficult year in stage races, failing to win a single one for the first time in many years. However, they have been winning stages and their one day performances might not have equalled earlier seasons, they have been good.

Lorena Wiebes is their most prolific winner but is not racing this weekend, but Bredewold has been going well, taking three WorldTour wins, including Amstel Gold Race, perhaps her best and bravest victory to date. As one would expect for a rider who has two consecutive successes in Plouay, she knows the race, but perhaps more importantly is the way she won them. The first victory came on the back of a powerful sprint from a large group, the second from a breakaway, catching a solo rider with her sprint.

The team head to France with a strong team too, with Van der Breggen and both Blanka Vas and Steffi Häberlin having shown excellent recent form. They'll need it though as Marianne Vos is another double winner on Saturday’s start line.

Her two wins came in 2012 and 13, seasons when she won combined 42 races. That was another era for the women’s sport, before widespread professionalism, when the depth of talent was much shallower, but she’s been second four times and with team mate Pauline Ferrand-Prévot to play off, a third win is certainly possible.

Elisa Longo Borghini won solo in 2021, and, with such a strong cadre of fast women in the race, it’s likely she’ll need a repeat performance if she’s to win on Saturday, but her UAE team do have options, with Silvia Persico and Eleonora Gasparrini also there. Movistar have options too, with both Liane Lippert in flying form and the British prodigy Cat Ferguson representing the Spanish squad. And surely no one would bet against Ally Wollaston (FDJ-SUEZ), who has a similar profile to Kopecky.

If you watched the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift this summer, you’ll know what to expect from this race around Brittany. We’ll have narrow winding roads, short, sharp climbs and a route designed for aggressive racing. 

At 166km, it’s one of the longer one-day races on the calendar and with 2,315m of elevation, it’s also one of the hardest. The race starts and finishes in Plouay, along the Boulevard des Championnats du Monde, named after the town that hosted the 2020 World Championships. 

The race then loops south, passing close to the seaside town of Lorient, which lends the race its name, before heading east and then north. Here, the route gets slightly lumpier before joining the final circuit with 31.5km to go. Nine kilometres later, they cross the line for two full laps of the 11.8km circuit. 

Plouay has always finished with laps, and while there is no change from last year’s circuit, it has been somewhat sanitised from earlier years. The steep and incredibly narrow Ty Marrec climb, which used to precede two kilometres of desperate chasing on the wide run to the line, is gone. And the wider but longer Restergal climb of earlier this decade is also no longer used, making the Côte du Lezot, and its 7.5km out, the last real place to make a difference. 

It's followed by some very narrow roads where it's east to get out of sight of a chaotic peloton until the final kilometre, which is wide and beautifully surfaced, though rarely the scene of a bunch sprint, such is the nature of the race.