Demi Vollering (SD Worx-Protime) out-sprinted Elisa Longo Borghini (Lidl-Trek) and Neve Bradbury (Canyon-SRAM) to take stage 4 and the overall GC at the Tour de Suisse Women on Tuesday.
Vollering wasn’t aiming for a stage win as much as doing a good sprint. “I didn’t expect to win today, but it was really nice to sprint again, I didn’t do that for a long time, and I really like to sprint in a final like this. It was a really strong battle with the girls in front.”
“It’s kind of a home race,” Vollering added, as she lives and trains in Switzerland. “So I’m really happy that I could win. They were really nice stages, and it’s a good feeling already towards the Tour de France because we have a lot of climbing there also. It’s always good to win climbing races before your big goal.”
Second place Neve Bradbury and her team gave it their all to disrupt the GC. “Today’s final was brutal. Our best chance at winning the stage and securing second on GC was to tire Longo Borghini, so we went full gas, attacking one after another until we had nothing left. We had a strong team with many riders high in GC, like Elise after the first stage and then Antonia and Kasia were up there. That meant we could play many cards and make other teams suffer in various race situations.”
Elisa Longo Borghini explained her team’s tactics afterwards. “We really wanted a hard race and it was a little bit of a game of poker when the breakaway went but we were confident in Brodie because she was actually virtually in the third spot so, we just let her go. When SD Worx started chasing, we decided to go full on the last climb, with a full lead out from Gaia for me. Up the road, I still had Brodie and she did an amazing job bridging back on the breakaway.”
“In the final, it was just a roulette and it was hard to keep it together and in the sprint,” said Longo Borghini. “Demi was the strongest but today, big credit to my team because we really raced super well.”
RESULTS
Stage 4: Champagne›Champagne(127.5km)
Results powered by FirstCycling.com
