After a punchy sprint finish on the opening stage, the second day of racing at the Tour de Romandie Fémenin saw the peloton head towards a tough mountain finish on Vercorin; with its average gradient of just over eight percent for almost ten kilometres. It was a fast and flat start to proceedings with a four rider break going clear, while all Team dsm-firmenich PostNL riders remained in the bunch, supporting Juliette Labous and Nienke Vinke.
Coming onto the penultimate ascent the breakaway was caught and a strong tempo saw things string out and it stayed like that all the way onto the final ascent. There, some good positioning work by the team saw Vinke and Labous come onto the ascent towards the fore, where things ramped up as the kilometres ticked down. Vinke tried to put in a probing attack at one point but she was quickly shut down, and it became a race of attrition. Riding a measured climb, Labous had to let go of the wheels at around three kilometres to go but kept to her own tempo and passed others on the way to the summit, crossing the line for a nice fifth place on the stage.
Labous expressed: “Today was a flat start and the speed was high the whole time. The girls did a good job protecting me and Nienke throughout the stage, which was nice. On the climb I struggled at the bottom and felt a bit the effects of my last weeks’ of training where I had to rest a lot after the Tour, but I fought until the top and I’m really proud of this. Tomorrow will be a very exciting stage, I think!”