‘We see more and more in modern cycling that there are people capable of doing amazing things in both the Classics and stage races,’ says Elisa Longo Borghini. ‘For me, Tadej Pogačar is one in a million, a born champion. Then you see Wout van Aert – he goes more for stages than the GC, but he still wins a bit everywhere: up Mont Ventoux and then in cyclocross.’
And what about herself? ‘I mean, I’m average in everything, so I’m not a good one.’
Add self-deprecation to her repertoire. Few other riders can compare with Longo Borghini, who has Paris-Roubaix, the Tour of Flanders and Strade Bianche at the top of her palmarès. She has stood on the podium at the women’s Giro d’Italia and challenged for the Tour de France Femmes. She has Italian national time-trial titles and Olympic Road Race medals. She can even milk a cow. Beat that, Tadej and Wout.
As we sit in a restaurant in Bruges over coffee (Segafredo, naturally), next to wine crates compacted into a feature wall, it seems the Italian’s career is ageing like a fine bottle of her local Barolo. She has been taking stubborn, prestigious victories at cycling’s top table for more than a decade.
Even with her longevity and versatility, the recent years have been full of surprises. The 31-year-old Lidl-Trek (the new name for Trek-Segafredo) rider has discovered that the best-laid plans can go to waste, and has learned to roll with it. Her 2022 Paris-Roubaix glory came days after wanting to not race it after a bout of sinusitis.
On that 30km solo ride to victory, her lead rarely exceeded 25 seconds. Her rivals regularly saw her, but they couldn’t catch her. Bouncing around the cobbles and gritting her teeth on the offensive, there’s no better evocation of her racing style and mental strength.
‘I’m just born like this. Even in life I’m a bit like this. I think it’s just my character,’ she says.
Longo Borghini can rarely be accused of leaving energy to burn. This season she came to the Tour of Flanders weeks after a positive Covid-19 test left her feverish and bed-bound. She was dropped a couple of times after pulling for the last 20km for teammate Shirin van Anrooij, but came back and sprinted to third – a result ‘not even in my wildest dreams’.
Mind matters
A lack of finishing speed is perhaps Longo Borghini’s one weakness, but even that seems to have changed recently. She attributes her improvement to racing for every town sign with her boyfriend, fellow Lidl-Trek rider Jacopo Mosca.
‘It’s not that I improved my overall power, it’s the technique. Sometimes you see the 200m sign and you’re freaking out. Lately, I see it and I’m like: that’s my moment. It’s mostly the mindset.
‘There has been quite an improvement over when I was younger. I used to calculate a lot more, probably because I was insecure of my potential and also a little bit scared of my opponents. I was doubting and thinking my attack would probably not work out. And then I was thinking, “This rider will do this, or she will do that,” and all of a sudden the race is gone.
‘Right now, I feel more like I can make the race. Whatever comes out, it’s either a victory or the worst thing that happens is they catch me and maybe drop me. But at least I tried. At least I have this winning mindset now. Instead of always stepping back and looking what the others are doing, I just do.’
Longo Borghini attributes the change to the help of her team and psychologist Dr Elisabetta Borgia (who was featured in episode 79 of the Cyclist Magazine Podcast, available from all the usual podcast places).
‘I had a lot of pieces around and she helped put them together,’ Longo Borghini says. ‘She just gave me confidence. She was like, “These numbers are really good, you have to believe in them. But first of all, it’s a power you have inside. You have to feel your instinct and just follow it.” Sometimes you just have to unlock your potential.’
She pauses and then adds with a laugh, ‘It sounds like a brand slogan.’
Her own potential extends further than cycling success. Until 2012, she juggled top-level racing and a communications degree with designs on becoming a translator. However, missing a flight home from Flèche Wallonne for an exam was a wake-up call. She committed fully to sport, giving herself three years to get results.
Academia will have to keep waiting. Longo Borghini has become a fixture in the top ten, competitive from spring Classics through the summer stage racing season, defined by the La Vuelta Femenina, Giro Donne and Tour de France Femmes.
All-rounders are all the rage in the WorldTour. But while she belongs alongside the likes of Wout van Aert, Demi Vollering and Tadej Pogačar as a leading example, she does not identify as a born champion: ‘I just had to work hard. It’s my culture. I live for my work and just do my best every single day. I dedicate my life to cycling and I always think the work will be rewarded one day.’
Such lessons were gleaned at home in Ornavasso, among the mountains of northern Italy. Her mother, Guidina dal Sasso, was a cross-country skier who went to three Winter Olympics; her father, Ferdinando, was a technician and coach for the men’s national team.
‘I’ve always seen my mum going out and training, the same as my classmates’ mums were going to work,’ she says. ‘I never had the feeling she wasn’t working because she was an athlete. For me, it was normal and natural to go and do some sport.’
Clean sweep
As a child, Longo Borghini attended Italian national team skiing training camps with her mum. There was an early crossover with her future sport, as the squad would sometimes prepare on the Passo dello Stelvio, searching for pockets of snow out of season.
‘Because it was really cold, I always stayed with the cleaning ladies. They let me in the hotel and I went in the kitchen and in their trolley,’ Longo Borghini says.
‘I was putting out the towels and doing the rooms with them. But it was fun, an easy approach to sport. My parents never pushed me, especially my mother – if it was her choice, I would not do any sport.
‘She always told my dad that she really didn’t want me and my brother to sacrifice so much for sport because she knew what it takes to be a top athlete. But by the time we started cycling and grew up, she became our first fan.’
Longo Borghini started off occasionally racing, and beating, the boys. She would spend May transfixed by the Giro d’Italia, watching the live coverage and post-race analysis. After each stage she’d write down the podium finishers, as well as the best-placed rider from Vini Caldirola, the team of her brother, Paolo. A professional cyclist between 2004 and 2014, he is her paragon and idol.
Eleven years her senior, Paolo believed that she had to learn for herself, but he did pass on a few nuggets, such as not excessively tightening your arms on the cobbles and aways using a pair of new gloves for Paris-Roubaix.
‘In 2021, I did not listen to him,’ says Longo Borghini, ‘and then I ended up with the stigmata, like Jesus Christ! When I came home, he said, “I told you so.”’
The following April, she didn’t make the same mistake and returned to Italy with a Roubaix cobblestone (and zero blisters). Full of emotion, she hardly slept for two days after winning.
‘Even though you maybe don’t think you like the race so much or don’t think it’s so suited to you, all of a sudden you’re winning it. And you’ll have a plaque in the shower saying that you won Paris-Roubaix. It’s pretty special,’ she says.
If that was her highlight, the 2022 World Championships Road Race in Australia was the letdown. Longo Borghini drove the pace in front, one of five riders from five different nations escaping over the last hill. They had a lead of 17 seconds with 6km left. However, there was a lack of cohesion and Annemiek van Vleuten – broken elbow and all – got back on and escaped to victory.
‘I was really sad about it. I didn’t seize the opportunity,’ Longo Borghini says. Would she do anything differently if she could replay it again? ‘This is a question I asked myself, but I don’t want to have an answer. I did what I did because I truly believed that was the best thing.’
In the following weeks, she was not the same Elisa: ‘I was a little bit more quiet than usual, nervous, I would not answer my family in a nice way. At a certain point, I was like, “Why?” Why do I have to be so moody because of a freakin’ bike race? OK, it’s the World Championships, but in the end it’s sport and there are much worse things in life. Get over it, Elisa.
‘I always try to use this disappointment in the next race. I want revenge – I want to win and prove that I’m strong. It’s like a boomerang effect.’
And so, like her near-namesake from Frozen, she let it go and won her next two races.
Doing the dirty work
Longo Borghini is guaranteed a joyful end to 2023, as she is set to marry Jacopo Mosca in October.
‘Poor guy!’ she laughs. ‘He’s the best thing that could happen in my life. Sometimes I’m a bit more serious, really precise. He’s a sunny person, always laughing a lot and making me laugh a lot. Also, he never believes me, but I’m the rider I am now because of him. He makes me a better person and cyclist, and he makes me a lot more sensitive towards the helpers.
‘Not that I wasn’t before, but he’s one of those guys who never gets to shine as he’s always getting the bottles, doing the dirty jobs, so now when I look at my helpers I’m really thankful. I always reflect on this: if it wasn’t for the girls working for 80 per cent of the race, big champions would never exist.’
There is a chance for this Italian great to add a brand new race to her record, with a women’s Milan-San Remo mooted for 2024. ‘I’m really hoping it will be the longest race on the women’s calendar. It’s a Monument and it has to start as one to make it special. OK, not 300km like the men’s, but maybe 200km,’ she says.
Whatever the event or distance, Longo Borghini will need to draw on all her powers to outdo superteam SD Worx and galacticas such as Demi Vollering, Lotte Kopecky, Marlen Reusser and Lorena Wiebes. Their strength in depth is hard to overcome, although Longo Borghini has come closer than most this year, going toe-to-toe with Vollering at the 2023 Liège-Bastogne-Liège, only to be outsprinted at the finish.
‘Maybe if the other teams are working and don’t give up every time they see one SD Worx rider in front, we can beat them. But if you always start with the attitude that if an SD Worx is in front that the race is finished, then you’re always racing for second.
‘I hate racing for second. I want to win races. I’ve been watching the races too much on TV lately and every time there was an SD Worx in front, the chasing group completely forgot their knowledge of cycling. They did not chase properly.
‘For example, at Gent-Wevelgem there was a group with many other riders and the only rider pulling was Shirin van Anrooij. Why? They could have chased down Marlen Reusser but they were too scared because Wiebes was in the peloton.’
So how do you go about beating SD Worx? ‘Just don’t be afraid,’ Longo Borghini says. ‘They are humans like us. Maybe they’re strong. So what? If we keep on being afraid of them, we will never beat them. It’s not a winning attitude. And that pisses me off a little bit, to be honest.’
Born racer
The cycling career of Elisa Longo Borghini
2011: Longo Borghini places fifth in her first race as a pro, Omloop Het Nieuwsblad.
2012: Joins Hitec Products. Takes a surprise third in the World Championships Road Race. Finishes ninth overall and best young rider at the Giro Rosa.
2013: Wins Trofeo Alfredo Binda solo and finishes second to Marianne Vos in Flèche Wallonne.
2014: Italian National Time-Trial Champion and fifth in the Giro. Wins her first stage races, the Trophée d’Or and Tour of Brittany.
2015: Signs for Wiggle Honda Pro Cycling and becomes Italy’s first female Tour of Flanders winner with a 35km solo break. Takes victory in the Route de France.
2016: Olympic Road Race bronze medalist, just behind winner Anna van der Breggen in Rio. Places third at European Road Championships.
2017: Wins both road and time-trial National Championships, followed by victory at Strade Bianche, second at the Giro d’Italia and third at La Course by Le Tour de France.
2019: Joins Trek-Segafredo. After an indifferent 18 months, a stage win and the overall at the Emakumeen Bira is a welcome return to form.
2020: Takes a maiden Giro stage and third overall. Second at the European Road Championships and Ceratizit Challenge by La Vuelta, and third in the Worlds road race.
2021: Wins Trofeo Binda and GP de Plouay, second at Strade Bianche, third at the Olympic Road Race, Paris-Roubaix, La Flèche Wallonne and Liège-Bastogne-Liège.
2022: Paris-Roubaix champion after a buccaneering lone break. Wins a stage and the Women’s Tour overall, thanks to bunch sprint bonus seconds on the final stage.
2023: Stage and GC winner at the UAE Tour, second at Liège-Bastogne-Liège and third in the Tour of Flanders in the face of SD Worx might.
Longo Borghini on…
Embarrassing parents
‘I have a really embarrassing memory from the 2020 World Championships in Imola. My parents had a pass for the VIP lounge – they didn’t care about the food or anything, they just wanted to see the race. I was on the podium and all of a sudden, I see my dad there with a backpack going, “Eeeeeeelisa!”’
Marketing the Tour de France Femmes
‘They did a very good campaign. Early in the year a guy from ASO visited every rider who could potentially be a GC contender to collect content and interviews for social media and TV. If people can feel similarities and connections to the riders, then you create interest. There were a lot of people on the side of the road and we had the attention that we deserve.’
The cancellation of the Women’s Tour
‘I really hope it comes back next year because it’s a race that riders are looking to win. It is an event that has steadily gained big prestige on the calendar, and it seems like British people like cycling a lot. The crowds are incredible. What I really liked was all the schools coming out. It’s a way of educating youngsters about sport.’