After yesterday’s TTT, the first official road stage was on the menu today for Team dsm-firmenich PostNL at La Vuelta Femenina. The team took responsibility for chasing the breakaway of six throughout the day and kept the gap small all the time. On the only categorized climb of the day, Charlotte Kool just missed making it over the top by a few metres and found herself in a chasing group with the support of her teammate Nienke Vinke. The group made contact again with three kilometres to go, when crashes caused some chaos in the technical run-in. While all our riders escaped the crashes, Charlotte got held up and couldn’t sprint for the win. Juliette Labous, who was kept safe by the team all day, was the first rider across the line in 15th position.
Speaking at the finish Labous said: “Today was a pretty fast day. When the breakaway went, we immediately started to control the gap with Abi especially and did quite a good job keeping it small. Everybody did their best on the climb, and Charlotte almost made it over the top with the front group. Unfortunately, she missed a few meters and Nienke then dropped back to help her to come back. They made it back with just three kilometres to go but then got held up by the crashes in the final and couldn’t sprint for the win. Fortunately, none of us crashed and we will look ahead towards our next chances already.”