With only one win under her belt, and not even a WorldTour one at that, how exactly did Magdeleine Vallieres win the World Championships in Kigali? The Canadian couldn't control how the bigger nations negotiated their tactics and how the rest of the peloton took on the most challenging Worlds course in recent memory, but she could control her own preparation. So she did.
With a boost from an EF Education-Oatly training camp in Andorra, and the French Grand Tour itself, Vallieres went all in on the Worlds road race.
"I was already targeting the World Championship, from the beginning of the year, I would say," Vallieres told Escape Collective. "I knew, looking at the course, that it was a course that could suit me, and my coach, looking at it, said it was actually a really good course for me."
With that knowledge in mind, Vallieres targetted the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift. It was already a big deal for her American team, who planned a pre-Tour altitude camp in Andorra. Vallieres, a key climbing domestique for the team leader Cédrine Kerbaol, got a real taste for targetted prep in Andorra in July. She then carried that into her own camp before the Worlds.
Abby Mickey
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