Demi Vollering won the mountainous stage 1 of the Tour de Suisse Women ahead Gaia Realini (Lidl-Trek), who finished 20 seconds back, and Elise Chabbey (Canyon-SRAM), who took third at 46 seconds.
Vollering was pleased with her win and explained afterwards the difficulty of the stage. “It’s never easy. But that’s the trick, to make it look easy, then you’re doing a good job. It was a strange race because it was so short with a lot of climbing, so you felt a little bit confusion in the bunch, like, how do we do this. I am now in a good position in the rankings, let’s hope I can keep it that way.”
Vollering also noted that her teammate, Marlen Reusser, was missed by the team at this year’s event. “It’s really sad that we don’t have Marlen here. She’s sick, I hope she gets well soon, and I really hope we can have another win here with the team. That would be great, for sure.”
Runner-up, Gaie Realini was happy with her finish. “It was a good test, I’m happy. I had some question marks after the crash at the Vuelta, the recovery and then the long altitude camp. I wanted to test myself and I am happy to have passed it.
Realini’s tactics were mainly focused on gaining time on her other rivals besides Vollering.
“With less than 5km to go, I thought I would make my move and see what happened behind,” Realini explained. “I expected Vollering to follow and she did. She’s probably the worst opponent to have on my wheel, but I stayed focused on myself more than racing tactically against her. Hearing from Ina over the radio that the gap to the rest of the peloton was growing was a nice confidence boost. Catching Chabbey was the first goal, then I continued at my own pace to the end, even when Demi forced her way solo to the finish. Finishing 22″ behind Vollering is a good account for today.”
According to the website Lantern Rouge, Vollering had one of her best rides of the season in terms wattage: “Vollering did the best performance of the season in women’s cycling, pushing 5.50 ᵉW/Kg for 26:36 min. [Gaie] Realini with her probably the strongest effort yet averaged 5.44 ᵉW/Kg, losing only 22 seconds to Vollering.”
RESULTS
Stage 1: Villars-sur-Ollon > Villars-sur-Ollon (58.6km)
Results powered by FirstCycling.com
