Annemiek van Vleuten (Movistar) showed her peerless ability on the hardest climbing stage of La Vuelta, moving into the race lead with a brilliant performance on the five categorised ascents over the 106 kilometre stage.
On the penultimate climb of Alto Fuente Las Varas, van Vleuten’s ruthless pace slimmed the front bunch into an elite group, before riding away from the last rider to maintain contact, Demi Vollering (SD-Worx) with 28 kilometres to go. From there, it was a hard effort all the way to the finish line, with van Vleuten solo, and Vollering joining forces with overnight leader Elisa Longo Borghini (Trek-Segafredo) and Liane Lippert (Team DSM) in the chase.
The trio never looked like bringing the lone leader back, and van Vleuten extended her lead all the way into the finish, winning the stage by 2’16 to the group of three led home by Longo Borghini, with another group of nine a further 34 seconds behind.
Van Vleuten crossed the finish line arms aloft, and will be the heavy favourite to take out the Challenge by La Vuelta, in addition to her Giro d’Italia Donne and Tour de France Femmes overall successes this year.
“It was a really good piece of teamwork, which makes it more special,” said van Vleuten. “They started riding hard before the third climb, setting things up for me.
“It was a short stage, only 100 kilometres - we’re more used to 150-160 kilometres – so I knew it had to be hard from the gun and I needed my teammates to make it hard from the gun, so, when I attacked, the rivals were already suffering.”
Van Vleuten admitted to being unsure exactly how well she was going coming into the race, but quickly put to bed any doubts with her performance.
“I had no clue after the Tour de France on how things were going to play out,” said van Vleuten. “I had some time off, and I went back to training – I just came back from altitude to this race – so you’re always insecure how you’re going to do.
“It’s the second day of racing, normally when you go for the GC, you attack later. At the TDF it was the seventh day, when people are more tired, now they were super fresh. I hadn’t seen them for five weeks wither, so it’s hard to compare how strong they are.”
The 38-year-old star of the sport wasn’t taking anything for granted, acknowledging the difficulties of the upcoming stages.
“It’s going to be hard all the way until Madrid,” said van Vleuten. “Tomorrow will be tricky, but I know the roads perfectly because I’ve been training in the area.
“Stage 4 will be the most dangerous one, it’s really windy and I know from the 2010 World Cup in Valladolid that gaps can be opened there in the echelons. We take things day by day from here, three more stages to go.”
Brodie Chapman (FDJ-SUEZ-Futuroscope) was the top performer of the Australians, finishing 14th on the stage to move up to 9th overall on the general classification.
The Ceratizit Challenge by La Vuelta continues with Stage 3 Camargo to Aguilar de Campoo over a 96-kilometre hilly course. Watch Live and Free from 2.20am AEST on SBS On Demand or watch the replay and winning moment the following day on SBS On Demand.
