Anna van der Breggen (Boels Dolmans) congratulated her compatriot Annemiek van Vleuten (Mitchelton-Scott), who suffered a broken wrist on stage 7 and was forced to abandon the Giro Rosa despite being the overall leader.

Van der Breggen said that he never wanted to get the Maglia Rosa in this way and said he was sorry that van Vleuten crashed out of the race.

"It's a little strange," said van der Breggen, who finished second behind Elisa Longo Borghini (Trek Segafredo) on stage 8, San Marco La Cutra, to become race leader."

"It didn't turn out the way anyone thought it would and we didn't get the pink, but on the other hand you could sense that the fighting spirit was back and everyone was focused today to get the pink again.

Mitchelton Scott revealed that Van Vleuten was forced to abstain due to a broken wrist and will not be able to compete in the Imola World Championships. Van Vleuten said that his absence is disappointing only after a great season that included seven wins in the rainbow jersey.

Van Vleuten was just recently selected to represent the Netherlands at the World Championships, along with Van der Breggen, Marianne Foss, Demi Vollering, Chantal van den Broeck-Braak, Amy Peters, Ellen van Dijk, and Florche McKay. She had just been selected for the Dutch national team.

"As a rider, it's never good to retire from a crash, especially for her. Especially for her. Especially for her. She had been riding so well this season, she had so many important races coming up, and here she was wearing pink.

Van der Breggen, along with CCC-Liv's Voss, Amanda Spratt (Mitchelton Scott), Omer Shapira (Canyon SRAM), Erica Magnardi (Serratigit WNT), and Mavi Garcia (ALe BTC Ljubljana) Van Vleuten seemed to blame the condition of the roads for the crash that caused him to fall." There are a lot of bad roads in this Giro, and maybe after a couple of days everything will be fine and yesterday it wasn't."

Stage 8 of the Giro Rosa opened in a much different style than the previous day. With Van Vleuten's retirement, Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM) became the new race leader.

The final stage not only included two tough second class mountains, but strong winds caused an echelon early in the race that split the pack. On the final climb down to the finish, a select group of climbers including Van der Breggen and Longo Borghini broke away and they finished together, with Longo Borghini winning and Van der Breggen becoming the new race leader.

After the stage, van der Breggen commented, "Today was echelon, long downhills, and the last climb was really steep and long."

On the final climb, the Dutch national champion escaped with Longo Borghini. He said, "Lizzie Deignan was so fast that a lot of riders had already fallen off. Of course I was happy that only Elisa was able to follow and drop Cassia."

Despite losing the lead to Longo Borghini, the Boels-Dolmans rider finished second and took the Maria Rosa on Saturday's final stage.

However, the new race leader was positive about today's events. He said, "In the end it was a good day. It's good for the team. If they worked all day, and in these echelons and stages you really need the team, it's good to be able to do well and give them something back. Tomorrow is another hard stage, so we have another fight ahead of us and now we need to recover quickly to be ready for that."

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