#blanka vas

[roglaert]

📸 ucicyclocrossworldcup

[rogloptimist]

📸 @femkegerritse, @eloisemavian

[wouteke]

[marcelskittels]

MARIANNE VOS & BLANKA VAS Paris 2024 Olympics - Cycling: Women's Road Race 📸 by Zac Williams/SWpix

[womensworldtour]

Tour de France Femmes - Stage 5

After four stages and three days, the Tour de France Femmes finally crossed into France, where it would finish in Amneville. This was a lumpy stage with five categorized climbs, and many teams had breakaway ambitions. The strongest of the breakaway attempts was a trio of strong riders up the road in the latter half of the race. Fem van Empel (Visma Lease-a-Bike), Loes Adegeest (FDJ-Suez), and Julie Van de Wilde (AG Insurance-Soudal) worked together well and stayed away for a long time, with van Empel scooping up the bonus seconds near the end. The biggest news from this portion was how much Gaia Realini (Lidl-Trek) appeared to be struggling at the back on the short climbs, not a good sign for her GC prospects before we even got to the mountains.

The story of this stage, however, was not one of the breakaway versus the peloton, but of the cruelty of this sport. In an unassuming curve 6km from the finish, a relatively high-speed crash in the main bunch took down some of the top riders, including yellow jersey wearer Demi Vollering (SD Worx-Protime), Ruby Roseman-Gannon (Liv-AlUla-Jayco), polka-dot jersey Puck Piertese (Fenix-Deceuninck), and Pfeiffer Georgi (dsm-firmenich-postNL). It was a bad crash, with some riders taking a long time to get up and others—including Georgi—not getting up at all, abandoning the race. The images of the crash were not pretty, and we will not reproduced them here.

Vollering was up relatively quickly, but didn't get back on the bike for a while, as she looked to be in pain and had visible tears in her shorts showing road rash on her hip. With the crash outside the 5km mark, all Vollering could do was remount and try to chase back on. We don't even think she got a bike change, and she didn't have any teammates to help her for quite a while, until she reached Mischa Bredewold who could help pull her on the flats.

Up ahead, the parts of the peloton that had survived the crash soon caught the breakaway, and Kristen Faulkner (EF-Oatly-Cannondale) sparked the winning move off the front. Only Blanka Vas (SD Worx-Protime), Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM), and Liane Lippert (Movistar) could join. As they came into the sprint, Lippert attacked from behind, but Niewiadoma and Vas jumped quickly on her wheel and came past her, with Vas the faster of the two. Vas' reaction shows her mixed emotions on the day for Team SD Worx-Protime.

Behind, it was a race against the clock, as Demi Vollering fought to limit her time losses. She was moving quickly, but was in visible pain at the line and after the stage, though she did her cooldown as usual on the stationary bike.

Although Kasia Niewiadoma didn't win the sprint for the stage, she moved into the lead on GC after her strong performance yesterday and today, and will wear yellow tomorrow. We can't feel bad about Niewiadoma in yellow, she certainly deserves it, but even she would probably admit this isn't how she would prefer to take it.

We're a little disheartened with this crash, and hope the riders will recover. Like we said above, this is a cruel sport sometimes, and it's very off-putting. Not everyone was badly hurt—Puck Pieterse was walking around with seemingly boundless energy, throwing flowers to the crowd, despite skinning her chin, hands, and knees. But the overhead images of Pfeiffer Georgi will stay with us for a while, and only time will tell how well Vollering will be able to recover before tomorrow's increasingly mountainous course.

[roglaert]

📸 flandersclassics

[rogloptimist]

📸 @mischabredewold, @teamsdworxprotime

[rogloptimist]

📸 @tornanti_cc