"I Have Been Waiting Three Years For A Sprint Like That, And It Was Set Up Perfectly" — Célia Gery Produces A Breakthrough Overijse Finish To Win Brabantse Pijl Women 2026 Ahead Of Bredewold And Persico
Friday in Overijse. Célia Gery has won the 2026 Brabantse Pijl Women in the biggest one-day breakthrough of a French women's road season, producing a sharply judged uphill sprint in the Overijse finish to beat Mischa Bredewold (SD Worx-Protime) and Silvia Persico (Cofidis Women) after a tense and tactical 122-kilometre race that resolved in the final kilometre.
The 24-year-old Gery, riding her fourth season as a professional and her second with FDJ-Suez's rival squad, had come into the race as a mid-market sprint option in the 14/1 bracket. The win is her first at WorldTour or .Pro level, her first professional victory full stop, and the most substantial breakthrough in French women's cycling since Pauline Ferrand-Prévot's return to the road.
The decisive move of the race came with 22 kilometres to go, when Anna van der Breggen — the five-time Flèche Wallonne winner making her 2026 Ardennes debut — attacked from a reduced lead group with Loes Adegeest on her wheel. The pair built a 40-second lead through the Brusselsesteenweg sector and looked, for ten minutes, like the move that would decide the race. But a concerted Fenix-Premier Tech and FDJ-Suez chase pulled the gap back inside two kilometres to go, reabsorbing Van der Breggen and Adegeest at the one-kilometre kite and setting up the uphill sprint in Overijse.
The Overijse finish — a 400-metre drag at 5% on a narrowing road with a left-hand bend at the 150-metre kite — is a climbers' sprint that rewards patience. Gery sat ninth in the bunch through the final right-hand turn, moved onto Bredewold's wheel at 300 metres, came past the Dutch rider at 150 metres, and held the line clean to the line. Bredewold, the 2024 Omloop Het Nieuwsblad winner, took second; Persico, who opened her sprint early from Bredewold's wheel, fell to third.
"I have been waiting three years for a sprint like that, and it was set up perfectly," Gery said. "Anna and Loes went clear and the whole race changed, but I had teammates committed to the chase and I knew if we got to a sprint in Overijse I had a chance. The last 300 metres I was just holding Mischa's wheel and waiting. The line came earlier than I expected."
For Bredewold, second is both a reward and a frustration — a second podium in a week after her third place at Amstel Gold Race build-up last weekend, but a sprint she had looked a favourite to win. Persico's third marks her first Ardennes-opener podium and confirms Cofidis's mid-market revival in the women's WorldTour. Van der Breggen's late attack, though caught, was rewarded with the race's combativity prize and a sixth-place finish from the reduced bunch — a performance that puts her firmly in the Flèche Wallonne conversation for Wednesday.
The Brabantse Pijl Women result is the last reading of the Ardennes-opener form book before Sunday's Amstel Gold Race Ladies and Wednesday's Flèche Wallonne Femmes. Demi Vollering, who skipped Friday's race to keep her Amstel-Flèche-Liège programme clean, remains the 4/7 Sunday favourite; Bredewold's podium and Persico's third now complicate the mid-market read, and Gery's win puts the young French rider on a Sunday startlist she had not previously been expected to make.