A trio of national champions in the shape of Spanish champion Mavi Garcia, newly crowned New Zealand champion Ella Wyllie and Australian champion Ruby Roseman-Gannon will make it a colourful and strong Liv AlUla Jayco line-up at the 10th edition of the iconic women’s Strade Bianche on Saturday 2nd March.
The increased race distance of 137km for the 2024 edition, from Siena to Siena, will see the women’s peloton fly across 12 gnarly gravel sectors, totalling 40.6km and 1611meters of elevation gain before culminating in spectacular Piazza de Siena.
Known to be one of the hardest one-day races on the women’s UCI WorldTour calendar, the Australian outfit is pleased to have Garcia within its ranks for this year’s edition, after the 40-year-old finished in 2nd place in the event back in 2020.
Coming of the back of a well-fought out third place overall at the recent UAE Tour, Garcia lines up with confidence and with a strong team also including Australian duo Alex Manly and Amber Pate, who each add strength and valuable positioning skills to the team, along with new 2024 recruit from Sweden, Caroline Andersson.
Ella Wyllie“I’m really looking forward to my first Strade Bianche, it’s such an iconic race and our team has a strong line up. Mavi’s placed second before and with the experience of the other girls, I’m keen to learn lots.
I also cannot wait to debut my new white New Zealand champions kit on the white roads of Italy… and maybe another surprise.”
Megan Chard – Sport Director “I think we’ve got a really well rounded team we have three of our best climbers with Mavi, Ella and Caroline. We have seen great condition with all of them but we’ve never seen them ride together. We also have more punchy riders with Alex, Ruby and Amber and we can see that Amber’s really stepping up in the past few months and Ruby also came in very good to the classic season.
We’re not going in with one pure leader, I think we have a team that can cover each other go for some big moves and some big opportunities and I think that’s going to be really exciting and we are definitely look forward to it.
The additional route really makes the race interesting and it’s a lot harder and it’s going to bring the action more towards the end than mid-race. There’s definitely not as many places where you can recover now compared to previous years and I think the dynamic will be changed.
It could be a wet Strade which will make things extra nervous and we just have to be prepared for that with our positioning and just fighting to make life a lot easier. Overall the team is motivated, the team is excited and we’re just really looking to make it inside that top-10.”
Liv AlUla Jayco at the 2024 Strade Bianche:Caroline Andersson (SWE)Mavi Garcia (ESP)Amber Pate (AUS)Alex Manly (AUS)Ruby Roseman-Gannon (AUS)Ella Wyllie (NZL)
Photo: Sprint Cycling
