The
Women's road race of the
2015 UCI Road World Championships took place in and around
Richmond, Virginia, United States on September 26, 2015. The course of the race was with the start and finish in Richmond.
Pauline Ferrand-Prévot
Pauline Ferrand-Prévot (born 10 February 1992) is a French multi-discipline bicycle racer, who rides for UCI Elite Mountain Bike team BMC MTB Racing in cross-country cycling. and has signed for Ineos Grenadiers for 2023. Ferrand-Prévot has a ...
was the defending champion, having won the world title in 2014.
In a sprint finish of a select group of nine riders, Great Britain's
Lizzie Armitstead
Elizabeth Mary Deignan (née Armitstead; born 18 December 1988) is an English professional world champion track and road racing cyclist, who currently rides for UCI Women's WorldTeam . She was the 2015 World road race champion.
Deignan is ...
added the rainbow jersey to her
UCI Women's Road World Cup
The UCI Women's Road Cycling World Cup was a season-long road bicycle competition for women organized by the Union Cycliste Internationale between 1998–2015. This competition consisted of a series (which has varied from 6 to 12 events) of rac ...
overall victory, out-sprinting Dutch rider
Anna van der Breggen
Anna van der Breggen (born 18 April 1990) is a Dutch former professional road bicycle racer, who rode professionally between 2009 and 2021 for Team Flexpoint, , and . She won the gold medal in the women's road race at the 2016 Summer Olympics ...
by just over a wheel's length.
The podium was completed by home rider
Megan Guarnier
Megan Guarnier (born May 4, 1985) is an American former racing cyclist, who rode professionally between 2010 and 2019 for the , and teams. She was made a member of Phi Beta Kappa at Middlebury College in 2007.
Major results
;2009
: 2nd Chol ...
, the first American to podium in the event since
1994
File:1994 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1994 Winter Olympics are held in Lillehammer, Norway; The Kaiser Permanente building after the 1994 Northridge earthquake; A model of the MS Estonia, which sank in the Baltic Sea; Nelson ...
.
Qualification
Qualification was based mainly on the
2015 UCI Nation Ranking as of August 15, 2015. The first five nations in this classification qualified seven riders to start, the next ten nations qualified six riders to start and the next five nations qualified five riders to start. Other nations and non ranked nations had the possibility to send three riders to start.
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* Other nations (3)
Moreover, the outgoing World Champion and continental champions were also able to take part in the race on top of the nation numbers.
Course
The women rode eight laps on the road race circuit. The length of the circuit was and had a total elevation of . All road races took place on a challenging, technical and inner-city road circuit. The circuit headed west from Downtown Richmond, working its way onto Monument Avenue, a paver-lined, historic boulevard that's been named one of the "10 Great Streets in America". Cyclists took a 180-degree turn at the Jefferson Davis monument and then maneuvered through the Uptown district and
Virginia Commonwealth University
Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) is a public research university in Richmond, Virginia. VCU was founded in 1838 as the medical department of Hampden–Sydney College, becoming the Medical College of Virginia in 1854. In 1968, the Virginia ...
. Halfway through the circuit, the race headed down into Shockoe Bottom before following the canal and passing Great Shiplock Park, the start of the Virginia Capital Trail. A sharp, off-camber turn at Rockets Landing brought the riders to the narrow, twisty, cobbled climb up to Libby Hill Park in the historic Church Hill neighborhood. A quick descent, followed by three hard turns led to a climb up 23rd Street. Once atop this steep cobbled hill, riders descended into Shockoe Bottom. This led them to the final climb on Governor Street. At the top, the riders had to take a sharp left turn onto the false-flat finishing straight, to the finish.
Schedule
All times are in
Eastern Daylight Time
The Eastern Time Zone (ET) is a time zone encompassing part or all of 23 states in the eastern part of the United States, parts of eastern Canada, the state of Quintana Roo in Mexico, Panama, Colombia, mainland Ecuador, Peru, and a small p ...
(
UTC−4).
Participating nations
135 cyclists from 46 nations took part in the women's road race. The numbers of cyclists per nation are shown in parentheses.
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Final classification
Of the race's 135 entrants, 88 riders completed the full distance of .
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:2015 UCI Road World Championships - Women's road race
Women's road race
UCI Road World Championships – Women's road race
2015 in women's road cycling