Vos claims stage 4 of Simac Ladies Tour

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Marianne Vos took the penultimate stage of the Simac Ladies Tour in a sprint between Vos, Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM), and Chantal van den Broek-Blaak (SD Worx). The 34-year-old kept a cool head in the run in to the finish, which featured a short climb, as Niewiadoma attacked. Vos stayed on the Polish rider’s wheel and waited for the road to flatten slightly before launching her sprint with 150m to go to take the win.

Van den Broek-Blaak, who started the day 10 seconds behind the GC leader Marlen Reusser (Ale BTC Ljubljana) could not follow either Niewiadoma’s attacks or Vos’s sprint. However, the SD Worx rider, who is in her final full season as a pro, now sits at the top of the general classification after Reusser finished 23 seconds back.

How it unfolded

The penultimate stage of the Simac Ladies Tour began with the peloton taking stock of who had managed to escape yesterday’s crash-filled race and who would not be taking to the start for stage four.

Lorena Wiebes of Team DSM was amongst those who could not take to the startline of stage four as well as Sarah Roy of Team BikeExchange, Christine Majerus and Elena Cecchini of SD Worx, and Barbara Guarischi of Movistar. After falling on the previous stage, Emma Norsgaard (Movistar) started the day however the Danish rider pulled out after just 2km.

As well as those taken out of the race as a result of injury, the whole of team Ceratizit-WNT were unable to start stage four after a Covid-19 positive case within the team.

Stage 4 consisted of 8 hilly laps of an 18.5 km course with almost on every lap featuring a QOM or a bonus sprint. The first WOM point of the day was taken by Alison Jackson from Jeanne Korevaar, and

The first intermediate sprint was taken by Chantal van den Broek-Blaak who was looking for bonus seconds to make up the 10 second gap between her and Marlen Reusser. With over 130km to go splits were forming in the peloton on the wet and windy course and the front group consisted of around 45 riders.

With 120km to go Anouska Koster of Jumbo-Visma attacked and gained a gap on the peloton as the rain started to fall again. The 28-year-old Dutchwoman’s gap extended to over a minute and a half as Reusser was forced to defend her jersey alone, riding on the front of the bunch.

With Koster still in front, riders began to drop from the peloton as a consequence of the previous day and the weather. With 76km to go Koster’s lead extended to over two minutes as the rain continued to fall. Koster took the second and third QOM points with Alison Jackson (Liv Racing) who started the day in the climber’s jersey taking second.

With 51km to go, Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig of FDJ Nouvelle Aquitaine Futuroscope suffered a crash and although she made her way back to the bunch she eventually dropped out of the race.

The result of the fourth QOM with 45km to go mirrored the previous three with Koster stil 2:20 ahead of the bunch. Shortly after the race started to split and Koster’s gap began to come down as a group of 11 favourites split off the front of the race.

The group of 11 consisted of Van den Broek Blaak, Amy Pieters, Demi Vollering of SD Worx, Silke Smulders of Lotto Soudal Ladies, Marianne Vos of Jumbo Visma, Jeanne Korevaar and Alison Jackson of Liv racing, Eugenie Duval of FDJ Nouvelle Aquitaine Futuroscope, Kasia Niewiadoma of Canyon//SRAM  Pfeiffer Georgi of Team DSM and Reusser with Koster’s gap dropping to 38 seconds.

With just over 30km to go Kasia Niewiadoma attacked the chase group forcing a gap and taking Chantal van den Broek Blaak and Marianne Vos with her. The group eventually caught Koster making Van den Broek-Blaak the virtual leader on the road after starting the stage just 10 seconds down on Marlen Reusser and took five bonus seconds during the stage. Reusser was once again forced to chase with just Marta Bastianelli to help her.

The group of three leaders maintained a gap of around 50 seconds going into the final lap. Heading into the final 10km Ale BTC Ljubljana and Team DSM were sharing the work on the front in defence of their respective GC chances however the gap to the three leaders stayed around 50 seconds.

With 1.7km to go Niewiadoma attacked with Vos on her wheel, the pair began to gap van den Broek-Blaak but the Canyon//SRAM rider’s effort didn’t stick and the group stayed together.

On the final climb to the finish it was Niewiadoma who started the attacks, but after Vos and van den Broek Blaak recovered and came back the three started to look at each other and the race came down to a sprint as the road flattened out. Vos launched her sprint with 150m to go and took her effort all the way to the line to claim the win with van den Broek Blaak in third.

At the end of the stage Reusser relinquished her leader’s jersey to van den Broek Blaak who now leads by 20 seconds ahead of Ellen van Dijk (Trek-Segafredo) who sits a further 10 seconds behind. Alison Jackson retained her QOM jersey and Marianne Vos defended her lead in the points classification. Pfeiffer Georgi held onto the young rider’s jersey.