Two springs ago, when the great Marianne Vos was celebrating her 251st professional victory on the road at Amstel Gold, Paula Blasi had just finished her eighth day as a racing cyclist. She was a hungry 21-year-old already with a top-10 in every race she had participated in – but racing for the Spanish club team Massi-Baix Ter, she was most definitely still an amateur, operating at an incomparable level to the likes of Vos.
It’s only taken two years for Blasi to assimilate herself in the same league of Vos et al. At the 2026 edition of Amstel Gold, now riding for one of the most ambitious and successful teams in the women’s peloton in UAE Team ADQ, Blasi accelerated her already rapid development by attacking at the most opportune moment in a breathless race and then going solo to win the first of the Ardennes Classics by 27 seconds.
Paula Blasi won the 12th edition of the women's Amstel Gold, ahead of Kasia Niewiadoma and Demi Vollering (Image credit: Getty)
Vos had hoped to win this race, and she was an active figure in the hour of racing that preceded Blasi’s winning move, but neither the great champion herself, nor the modern era’s standard bearers – Kasia Niewiadoma and Demi Vollering – could do anything about 23-year-old Blasi. It was meant to be another exhibition from FDJ United-Suez, or a return to winning ways for SD Worx, but instead it was all about the Catalan who until just a wee while ago was an unknown proposition.
Wins at domestic level, a couple of small one-day professional victories last year, a handful of impressive GC showings and winning the U23 European Road Race Championships last October were all signs of Blasi’s potential, but nothing comes close to triumphing at Amstel Gold.
“I think I will need a couple of weeks or even months to realise this,” she said at the finish, clearly surprised by her own performance.
Yet to anyone who has been following Blasi’s journey in the last couple of years, the signs of greatness have been there from the start. In her teenage years, athletics was her sport until an injury curtailed that passion. While studying sports science at the University of Barcelona, she transitioned to triathlon, the first time she embraced cycling. At the beginning of the 2024 season, training to compete at the duathlon national championships, another injury impeded her plans. She was left with only cycling to focus on. “I immediately fell in love with the sport,” she said.
She immediately made her name for herself as well. It took her just eight weeks to win her first race – the Catalonia Championships, nonetheless, to proclaim herself the best in her local cycling-mad region – and a further week to win again, riding to victory at the Catalan Time Trial Championships. Here was a young athlete with no previous background in road cycling demonstrating an ability to climb among the best, and push sustained power. That’s the hallmark of a champion.
In most sporting journeys, progression isn’t linear. Yet Blasi’s cycling story thus far has been. Fourth on GC at the 2024 Tour de l’Avenir Femmes alerted UAE Team ADQ to her talent, and in 2025 she made even greater leaps, both in one-day and stage races. Third overall at the Tour Down Under this January was merely the confirmation that UAE had found and were now nurturing a future superstar. Amstel Gold acted as additional vindication, only on a much bigger stage.
(Image credit: Getty)
The Dutch race, famed for its unpredictability, saw rider after rider try their luck. Anna van der Breggen, Lorena Wiebes, Blanka Vas, defending champion Mischa Bredewold and Nienke Vinke all attacked for an impatient, determined SD Worx, but neither of them could manage what Blasi did. When Vinke dislodged herself from the peloton with 24km to go, just after the ever-dangerous Puck Pieterse was reeled in, Blasi went with her. Within a kilometre they were climbing the Cauberg, this race’s most iconic and often decisive climb, and a disjointed chase from behind allowed the duo to build their advantage.
Blasi couldn’t quite believe what was happening. “Five minutes before I broke away I was dropped, so I just came back and I said, ‘OK, let‘s give it a go and try to help’, and I suddenly found myself in the front.” She was then suddenly in the lead, never to be seen again. But there was nothing flukey about it, riding Vinke convincingly off her wheel, activating time trial mode and cruising towards the finish. Her winning margin would have been greater had she not sat up and soaked in the biggest moment of her burgeoning career. On the podium a little while later, she proceeded to sink her Amstel beer in one. Richly deserved.
Just a few days earlier, her compatriot, idol and UAE teammate, Mavi García, told the Spanish publication AS that Blasi “is a cyclist with a lot of talent and a big motor, with a winning mentality, humility to work hard and a capacity to be a leader. We have to let time pass, for her to learn and grow, but, yes, if everything goes as it has been, she will be a cyclist who will make things happen.”
They were prophetic words, spoken from a rider who has been closer to Blasi than anyone else in her still young cycling journey. Blasi isn’t the first to find cycling later in life and then thrive – the aforementioned Vollering was a speed skater until she was 21 and is now the best rider in the world – and you get the sense that this multitalented Catalan has only just begun. Paula Blasi – remember the name.
