The Italian Giro Rosa, the biggest multi-stage event of the women’s UCI calendar, concluded on the 13th of July with excellent results of the BTC City Ljubljana team. Members of the first Slovene professional women’s cycling team have successfully tackled the challenges of the 9 stages (950 kilometres). The first name of the team was the Pole Eugenija Bujak, who achieved an overall position close to the best cyclists. The rest of the girls also did their best across the 9 stage days and have exceeded all expectations, made before the departure to Giro Rosa in Italy.
The BTC City Ljubljana team was represented at the Giro Rosa by: Eugenija Bujak, who finished the Giro as the best on our team, and was placed 25th, while Polona Bategelj finished 47th, Špela Kern 53rd, Urša Pintar 84th, Elena Valentini 105th and Mia Radotić 114th among 134 cyclists, who finished the race. Part of the team at Giro Rosa was also Anja Rugelj, who did not finish the Giro, due to unfortunate circumstances. A clear winner of the race was the World Champion from Holland, Marianne Vos, who wore the leader’s pink jersey during the entire race.
The coach of the BTC City Ljubljana team, Gorazd Penko, was satisfied with the results of his team: “The team has shown its best form during all race stages, which makes our premiere at the toughest cycling event this year a success. The girls have all shown great team spirit and have finished the race without any serious falls. The achievements of our girls are of even greater value since our accompanying team is pretty small, but nevertheless extremely devoted. If we look at other cyclists and teams we see that they have heftier budgets, bigger accompanying teams and more intensive communications support.”
Maja Oven, the Director of team BTC City Ljubljana and the Director of the BTC market communications and public relations sector is also extremely proud of the results achieved by our girls: “I feel we reached our expectations, in the sense of results as well as our business goals. The recognisability of the BTC City trademark has grown bigger, as we found our place in the spotlight on the international map of the biggest cycling teams. Over the course of just a few months we did a lot of work, now we just need to think about the future evolution and strengthening of the team, in which we want to also include young Slovene cyclists. At the start we saw the inclusion of foreign cyclists into our team as a motivation for our future work. Since most of the girls on our team come from recreational cycling, they have a true role model in Eugenija Bujak.
About Giro Rosa
The Giro Rosa race, which was this year attended by the top 20 cycling teams of the world, started on July 4th in the south of Italy, in Caserta. The race, which is considered as one of the toughest on the women’s UCI calendar, covered 9 stages, with the longest being the 3rd stage (125 km) from Caserta to San Donato val di Comino. The last race stages were most demanding. The cyclists covered more than 950 km in the course of all 9 stages.
The members of the BTC City Ljubljana team have qualified for the Giro Rosa tour for the first time in 25 years, after three years of sending in applications to receive an invite to the race, which can be attended only by the top 20 cycling teams. The invitation is proof enough that our team has, with its great results, shown that it has deservingly found its place among the top professional women’s cycling teams on the international level.
>>Official results and all the news about Giro Rosa
Additional information:
Maja Oven, Director of team BTC City Ljubljana and Director of the BTC Market Communications and Public Relations Sector
- T: +386 (0)1 585 13 15
- E: maja.oven@btc.si
