Fem van Empel (Netherlands) captured the stage 3 bunch sprint on Wednesday at the Tour de l'Avenir Femmes. From the group of 20 riders Dominika Wlodarczyk (Poland) took second place, holding off Gaia Masetti (Italy), who finished third.
Van Empel earned her second podium in as many days, finishing third on stage 2. She accelerated to the front of the race with under 200 metres to go and rode away from her challengers across the uphill finish line.
“Yeah, a great feeling. Yesterday, I finished third. I was in good position but I was unlucky that I couldn’t finish it off. But today, we made a good plan. We were in a very good position on the last climb. Shirin van Anrooij and Nienke Vinke did a very good job, and yeah, we finished it off,” Van Empel said after earning her first road victory of the season.
“I wore the polka-dot jersey today, so my goal was to take points on the climbs. When the legs are good, then we can go for a sprint. It worked today.”
The top three riders on GC marked each other in the finale, with race leader Antonia Niedermaier (Germany) crossing the line in 10th position, three spots behind second-placed Anna Shackley (Great Britain) and with third-placed Shirin van Anrooij (Netherlands) on her back wheel. Niedermaier retained a 14-second advantage over Shackley and a 23-second margin over Anrooij with two days remaining.
Nathalie Quinn (USA) went on a solo attack for close to 30km near the end of the 97.3km charge to Val d’Epy, but with 15km to go the peloton pulled her back to set up the sprint finish.
