Elynor Bäckstedt, left, and Ireland's Lara Gillespie combined like a dream to win Le Samyn des Dames, via Gillespie, in Belgium today (Photo by Rhode Van Elsen-Getty Images)
Lara Gillespie (UAE Team ADQ) started the season aiming high, looking to win some of the big ones. And now she has opened her 2026 account in style at Beobank Samyn Ladies (1.1). You get the feeling we've only had a glimpse of what she's really capable of on the road.
At the finish she won the nine-rider sprint from the breakaway with ease, with none of the women she was with able to get near her. And though the 133.4km even featured 21 cobble sectors and climbs, Gillespie said she "would have like it harder".
"I said this morning I wanted a hard race and the team did an epic job from kilometre zero until the end," Gillespie said. She explained team mate Elynor Bäckstedt, who was in today's breakaway with her, had really helped her to win.
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"She's an outstanding team mate, I love being in a team with her. And we know how to work together, we can read each other’s mind and read each other’s racing legs. She's a top rider, she knows exactly how to race, and it was perfect."
When it was put to Gillespie that the end of the race - where she was in a league of her own - looked easy for her, she smiled.
"I would have liked it harder... I thought it was fun, I had fun today," she said, adding getting in a breakaway was "not exactly" the plan the team had set out before the start.
"But we knew if there was a group of eight to 10 riders, we wanted to have two. I saw Elynor was in a breakaway of nine said 'I'll jump across'," she explained of the breakaway going clear with 62km to go before she was last across to it.
As well as UAE Team ADQ having Gillespie and Bäckstedt up front, Liv AlUla Jayco had Caroline Andersson and Quinty Ton while Uno-X Mobility had Kamilla Aasebø and Alessia Vigilia.
Marthe Goossens (AG Insurance-Soudal Team) was also present, along with Marthe Truyen (Fenix-Premier Tech), Marta Jaskulska (Human Powered Health) and Amber van der Hulst (VolkerWessels Cycling Team).
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It's a mark of how far Gillespie has come since this time last year that, with just one full season on the road completed, hers was the, heads and shoulders, stand-out name in the group.
They worked well together and extended their gap to two minutes. However, with 25km to go, the advantage dipped below 1:40, and the peloton still had a chance of catching the leaders.
In the end, the breakaway was simply too strong, with too few teams willing and able to get a chase together back in the bunch. It helped there were three sets of team mates in the escape group, who all had other team mates trying to disrupt the cohesion of any chase in the peloton.
One of those teams that tried was Mia Griffin's Picnic PostNL, the only World Tour squad in the race to miss the breakaway. And though AG Insurance-Soudal also pressed hard in the bunch for a time, the breakaway's advantage increased - to 2:52 on the line - over the last 10-15km.
Bäckstedt did a terrific job up front to deter attacks, pounding away on the front and giving everything she had for her Irish team mate. But with Gillespie by far the fastest finisher in the front group, the pressure was on her.
In the end, she went early in the sprint, with no photo finish required; Goossens and Truyven a distant 2nd and 3rd, simply not on the same level as the flying Irish woman.
"I know I can sprint after a long day out so I took confidence and I knew I couldn't leave it too late, like before," Gillespie said. She felt she could "sleep easy" having won the day after her team mates and management had put so much trust in her.
Beaming in the aftermath of her biggest career win on the road, she said she intended to go home and get some rest with her focus already on next week's races.
She is down to ride Ixina GP Oetingen p/b Lotto (1.Pro) in Belgium next Wednesday and Danilith Nokere Koerse Women (1.Pro) the following week, also in Belgium.
The 24-year-old Wicklow woman - a European and World senior title winner on the track - won today after two hard races at the weekend; crashing in Omloop Nieuwsblad (1.WWT) on Saturday and placing 2nd in Beobank Samyn Ladies (1.1) yesterday.
The fact she has come out of those two races with a 1st and 2nd - and looked so fresh and strong today - bodes very well for the weeks and months to come, with Gillespie already a big figure for Irish cycling, indeed Irish sport.
