Other than showing up on time for the race, step one of your plan for winning is knowing the position of your competitors. This is road racing 101.

You’re not wrong. Eating well and training hard is also racing 101.

But that has nothing to do with having a better strategy.

They still shouldn't have given the breakaway 10 minutes in a race as hard to control as this (with teams of 4). In the men's race, the favourite teams (Belgium and Slovenia) sacrificed riders earlier (Greg van Avermaet and Jan Tratnik respectively) to maintain the breakaway on a leash. The dutch women were arrogant and they paid for it.