Canyon-SRAM‘s Omer Shapira won the elite women’s Israeli National Championships road race for a record fourth time on Saturday, soloing across the line in Beit Guvrin with a 13-second advantage over Lianne Witkin and 27 seconds ahead of Antonina Reznikov.
Earlier this month, Shapira also won the national time trial title for the first time in her career, by over four minutes on a 25km course, but on Saturday beat the joint record of three road-race wins in a row that she had jointly held with Leah Goldstein – who won the title in 2007, 2008 and 2009 – and extended her run to four in a row.
Shapira won her first national title in 2017 while with Italian squad Giusfredi Bianchi, and her second with US team Cyclance Pro Cycling in 2018. She then moved to Canyon-SRAM in 2019, where she’s continued her victory streak.
“It was a strange race dynamic,” Shapira said of a course that she had previously described as “not ideal for my strengths”, despite the Beit Guvrin road race circuit, between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, featuring a number of climbs.
“In the end, I’m very happy to have won, and to wear this jersey for another year,” she said.
Canyon-SRAM also had 2015 national road race champion and two-time TT champion Rotem Gafinovitz taking part, with the 28-year-old taking fifth place, 12:05 down on her teammate.
Israel Start-Up Nation’s Omer Goldstein took the men’s road-race title on the same day.
Omer Shapira, the first ever winner of four consecutive Israeli women’s road national championships after today’s victory👏🇮🇱2017-2018-2019-2020“It was a strange race dynamic. In the end, I’m very happy to have won and to wear this jersey for another year.”📸Cycling Israel pic.twitter.com/sXy7kwYSgcNovember 21, 2020
