Blanka Vas (SD Worx-Protime) won stage 5 of the Tour de France Femmes, beating Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM), Liane Lippert (Movistar Team), and Kristen Faulkner (EF-Oatly-Cannondale) in the sprint of a group of four that emerged in a finish marred by a mass crash six kilometres from the finish.
The most prominent victim of the crash was maillot jaune Demi Vollering (SD Worx-Protime) who ended up losing 1:47 minutes, relinquishing the GC lead to Niewiadoma.
“It’s crazy, I still can’t believe it. I really did not expect this today because I felt so bad during the race. Lorena [Wiebes] said to me, ‘believe in yourself’, and it helped me a lot. My radio was not working, so I did not know what happened at the back. Demi crashed, so we lost yellow, that’s a shame, and now I have mixed feelings,” said the stage winner.
In the last kilometre, Faulkner attacked to anticipate a sprint, almost a copy of the final in the Olympic road race – but this time, Vas quickly closed the gap.
“In the final, I was like, ‘I cannot let Faulkner go’, because I did the same mistake in the Olympics. I was suffering so much, but I knew if I survive this small climb, then maybe I can win.
"The Olympics gave me a lot of confidence because I was racing in the front, so I know if I have a good day, I can be in the front,” Vas said.
How it unfolded
The peloton did not let any breakaway go in the first part of the race. In her second attempt, Loes Adegeest (FDJ-Suez) succeeded in getting away after the Côte de Saint-Pancré with 80km to go, and ten kilometres later, Julie Van de Velde (AG Insurance-Soudal) and Fem van Empel (Visma-Lease a Bike) bridged to Adegeest to establish the break of the day.
There were more attacks from the peloton as first Maaike Coljé (Arkéa-B&B Hotels), then Alice Towers (Canyon-SRAM), and finally Maëva Squiban (Arkéa-B&B Hotels) went on solo chases, with other riders also trying in smaller or larger groups, but none of them ever made it to the front.
40km from the finish, the break of three was 2:45 minutes ahead of the peloton where SD Worx-Protime began to chase in earnest, soon joined by Lidl-Trek and Movistar Team. On the Côte de Briey, the penultimate classified climb of the stage, the gap had been brought down to 1:36 minutes, and it was below a minute at the bottom of the Côte de Montois-la-Montagne.
Stage 4 winner and polka-dot jersey Puck Pieterse (Fenix-Deceuninck) set a hard pace in the peloton, trying to catch the break before the top, but Van Empel, Van de Velde, and Adegeest kept a 25-second lead over the QOM.
Van de Velde then rode her two companions off her wheel on the slight rise towards the bonus sprint, but Van Empel and Adegeest returned on the descent afterwards. The peloton was still 23 seconds behind at the 10km mark, but the gap quickly got smaller.
The break was almost caught when a very sharp chicane out of a roundabout just over 6km from the finish caused a mass crash. Most riders did not expect such a sharp corner and carried too much speed, and about 25 riders hit the ground.
Pfeiffer Georgi (DSM-Firmenich PostNL) and Magdeleine Vallières Mill (EF-Oatly-Cannondale) had to abandon the race because of their injuries while a.o. Vollering, Pieterse, Shirin van Anrooij (Lidl-Trek), Yara Kastelijn (Fenix-Deceuninck), Niamh Fisher-Black (SD Worx-Protime), Mavi García (Liv-AlUla-Jayco), Kim Le Court (AG Insurance-Soudal), Noemi Rüegg (EF-Oatly-Cannondale), Katrine Aalerud (Uno-X Mobility), Neve Bradbury (Canyon-SRAM), and Usoa Ostolaza (Laboral Kutxa-Fundación Euskadi) lost valuable time in GC in addition to any injuries they may have suffered.
At the front, Adegeest made a last bid for victory, dropping Van de Velde and Van Empel and holding off a small chase group until she was caught with 2.4km to go, putting Vas, Niewiadoma, Lippert, Faulkner, Emma Norsgaard (Movistar Team), Chloé Dygert (Canyon-SRAM), Lucinda Brand (Lidl-Trek), and Cédrine Kerbaol (Ceratizit-WNT) at the front of the race.
Dygert worked hard for Niewiadoma, and when the US rider swung off 1.2km from the line, Niewiadoma immediately attacked, also dropping Brand and Kerbaol. An acceleration from Emma Norsgaard just inside the flamme rouge did not reduce the group further, leaving Faulkner to make her move with about 750 metres to go when Norsgaard was finished.
Vas immediately went after the Olympic and US champion and closed the gap, leaving four riders to sprint for the victory. When Lippert started her sprint with about 220 metres to go, Vas and Niewiadoma responded right away. Niewiadoma came past Lippert 50 metres from the line, but Vas squeezed past on the last metres to win the stage while Niewiadoma took the overall lead.
Results
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