Strong ride sees Pfeiffer Georgi take 3rd in an attacking Tour of Britain opener

The opening stage at the Tour of Britain saw the peloton take on some hilly Welsh terrain from the aptly named Welshpool to the finish in Llandudno. Before the start there was a lot of anticipation that the day could be raced really aggressively but in the opening phase of the day the peloton took a more relaxed approach, with only a few attacks that were brought back. As a result, after the first categorised climb of the day Team dsm-firmenich PostNL wanted to make the stage harder so were involved in multiple attacks with various riders from the team.

Ultimately, the race winning break was formed on the second categorised climb of the day where current British champion Pfeiffer Georgi put in a strong dig, and alongside some other riders, forced a nine rider group clear. With the peloton giving up the chase behind, the front group built up an advantage of roughly four minutes as they headed towards the finish. Georgi tried to attack and go clear but was quickly marked and shut down by some squads that had two riders in the group, and the stage came down to a sprint to the line. Giving everything she had all the way to the finish, Georgi took a strong third place on the day and now sits in that same position overall after the opening stage.

After the stage Georgi said: “Before the stage we thought the race could go quite a few ways with a lot of climbing in the first part of the stage. In the end, it stayed pretty relaxed up the long climb so after this we started to attack as a team and then I went myself on the second QOM. A group of nine of us got away and we rode to the finish gaining quite a bit of time on GC. The pace was quite high in the group and with the dynamics of the other teams having numbers it was hard to attack and get away. I’m happy I could take a second in the intermediate sprint and then finish third on the day, which puts us in a nice place on GC. We will look for more opportunities for both the GC and stage wins in the coming days!”

Team dsm-firmenich PostNL coach Kelvin Dekker added: “The plan was to make a good step towards a good GC with Pfeiffer as our finisher, as that’s one of our main goals for the week. The beginning wasn’t too hard and the bunch then rode the big climb at an easier and steady tempo, so we focused everything on the last climb with around 40 kilometres to go. On that climb Pfeiffer went full-gas alongside some others and helped to force a break. She was the only from us in there which wasn’t as we would have ideally liked it, but we made a decision to continue with it because it was the right decision with a view towards the GC. Pfeiffer then managed to take a bonus second in the intermediate sprint, which was good. Then in the final we had hoped for more action and attacks. Pfeiffer tried at around two kilometres to go with Henderson but they didn’t get any space, so in the end it came down to a sprint in which we got third on the day. Maybe we could have been even more active in the deep final to try and go for the win but we will take the third place today, and see what we can do in the next stages.”