‘We gave it everything’: Australians battle through gruelling women’s road race 

The Australian women’s road team were pushed to their limits in an explosive elite women’s road race, which capped off the 2023 UCI Cycling World Championships.

Grace Brown, Lauretta Hanson, Brodie Chapman, Amanda Spratt, Alexandra Manly and Georgia Baker - called in to replace Ruby Roseman-Gannon who was a late withdrawal due to illness – lined up for the 154.1km race from Loch Lomond to Glasgow.

Once in Glasgow they would complete six laps of the technical 14km city circuit.

Having watched the junior men and women, under 23 men and elite men's races in the week leading up to the event, the Australians knew it would be a gruelling race of attrition.

“I don’t know how nice it is (to be the last to race of the championships), because we got to watch everyone else do this circuit and then we just got more and more nervous for it as it approached,” Brown, who finished 24th, said in a post-race interview.

“It was almost nice for the men I think going in a bit blind and just getting whacked in the face with it.”

Departing from Loch Lomond, the race travelled 50km through the Scottish countryside, before reaching the Glasgow city circuit where, as expected, the race lit up.

“Literally half a lap in I was thinking I don’t know how we can do six and a half of this … it was a real battle to get to the finish line to be honest,” Brown said.

“(It’s) just different strengths that you needed on those different terrains. In the city, just punching up those climbs; after a while you just don’t have the punch anymore and it becomes really hard.”

Hanson, who crossed the line in 23rd, said the team knew it was going to be an unpredictable and challenging race, and that positioning would be key to hanging on with the peloton.

“(Matt) Whitey said going in that for the first two laps we were going to just have to suffer to be there, and that’s all I was thinking as I was yo-yoing off the back in those first laps just trying to hang on – just one more climb was my thinking,” Hanson said.

“It wasn’t a normal race; it was more like a crit in those closing laps and it’s just one of those situations where you just don’t have the opportunity to close gaps through all the corners when you’re hanging on, because when the gap is gone, it’s gone.

“We didn’t get the result we wanted but we’re both empty and gave it everything.”

Belgian Lotte Kopecky won the race to be crowed world champion, with Dutch woman Demi Vollering winning silver and Danish rider Cecile Uttrup Ludwig rounding out the podium.

Manly suffered a mechanical early but fought back to the main bunch and finished in 57th, while Sarah Roy was involved in an unfortunate crash and had to abandon the race.