Highlights Stage 3 of Tour de Suisse
In a thrilling finale Demi Vollering (SD Worx – Protime) has won her third stage and the yellow jersey at the 2024 Tour de Suiss Women. After 127.5 kilometers with start and finish in Champagne at Lac de Neuchatel, the Dutchwoman who lives in Switzerland beat Elisa Longo Borghini (Lidl – Trek) and Neve Bradbury as well as Katarzyna Niewiadoma (both Canyon//SRAM Racing) in a 4-way sprint to the line to clinch victory in yellow. Before, Bradbury and Niewiadoma played their numbers on the final ten kilometers with countless alternating attacks – most chased down by Longo Borghini.
“I really didn’t expect to win today, but it was really nice to sprint again. I haven’t done that for a long time and I actually like it in a final like this. It was nice – also a nice fight with the girls up front – a really hard fight”, Vollering said after winning her fourth Women’s WorldTour stage race of the season.
In the General Classification the 27 year old brought an advantage of 1’28 over Bradbury home, with Longo Borghini in third place at 1’30. Niewiadoma finished the Tour de Suisse Women in fourth place, 2’24 behind the yellow jersey. Juliette Labous (dsm-firmenich – PostNL / + 3’47) and Antonia Niedermaier (Canyon//SRAM Racing / + 4’11), who both finished in the second group of the day, 42 seconds behind the four leaders, were fifth and sixth overall.
Gaia Realini (Lidl – Trek / + 5’33) worked hard on the day to prepare an attack from Longo Borghini and dropped from fourth to seventh on GC, whilst Kim Cadzow (EF Education – Cannondale / + 5’44) crashed in the final descend of the day and dropped from fifth to eighth place overall.
Vollering won not only the General Classification, but also the black jersey for the Points Classification. Bradbury took the White Jersey home as best young rider and her teammate Elise Chabbey won the Mountain Classification, whilst Canyon//SRAM Racing conquered the team ranking.
How the race unfolded:
Just like stage 3 also the final day began with a climb and the peloton split in pieces already early. After the climb Urska Zigart (Liv – AlUla – Jayco) and Nienke Vinke (dsm-firmenich – PostNL) went away to build a two rider breakaway, before seven chasers emerged on a long section of rolling terrain in the Jura mountains after roughly 50 kilometres of racing – including Niedermaier, Labous, Brodie Chapman (Lidl – Trek), Evita Muzic (FDJ – Suez), Rosita Reijnhout (Visma – Lease a Bike), Steffi Häberlin (Nationalteam Switzerland) and Niamh Fisher-Black (SD Worx – Protime).
These seven caught up with the two leaders and had a gap of more than three minutes to the main bunch, which made Labous the virtual overall leader of the Tour de Suisse Women for some time. That was, because Vollering only had one domestique left at her side in this part of the race, Mischa Bredewold. But roughly ten kilometres later the peloton grew immensely, when a second big bunch came back from behind, after being dropped at the climbs before. Now Marie Schreiber, Chantal van den Broek-Blaak and Femke Gerritse were also back with Vollering and started chasing the nine leaders to bring down the time deficit.
When the race then reached the final categorized climb with roughly 50 kilometres to go, the gap was down to two minutes and Lidl – Trek took over control in the bunch. Amanda Spratt and Gaia Realini accelerated hard to prepare an attack of Longo Borghini and over the top with 44 kilometres left to race it was only Vollering, Niewiadoma, Bradbury and Cadzow left on the wheel of the Italian Champion.
Cadzow crashed in the descend whilst the others caught back other riders from the former leading group and then started chasing the five remaining leaders Niedermaier, Labous, Muzic, Fisher-Black and Reijnhout. With twelve kilometres to go the chase was successful and 13 riders led the race, until 2.5 kilometres later Niewiadoma launched a hard attack and only Vollering, Longo Borghini and Bradbury stayed with her.
On the final ten kilometres then the Canyon//SRAM Racing duo attacked again and again, but nobody could finally break clear and Niewiadoma led the group around the final corner with 150 meters to go. Then Vollering launched her sprint from third position and was by far the fastest, to seal her third stage win of the race.