La Vuelta Femenina: Demi Vollering soars into red with powerful show of climbing prowess to win Stage 5
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Updated 02/05/2024 at 17:10 GMT
It was a captivating finish to Stage 5 of La Vuelta Femenina, as the field tackled the punishing, 13-hairpin climb up Rapitan Fort to end the first mountain stage, a 113.9km run from Huesca to Jaca. And it was Demi Vollering who proved the strongest, breaking away to secure not just the win, but also the GC lead. Watch and stream La Vuelta Femenina 2024 on Eurosport and discovery+.
Vollering powers to Stage 5 win and GC lead atop first mountain finish
Demi Vollering (Team SD Worx - Protime) fired herself into the red leader's jersey at La Vuelta Femenina as she broke away on the day's final climb to win Stage 5 in Jaca.
Vollering distanced all her other rivals on the first mountain stage, including Marianne Vos (Visma-Lease a Bike), to secure a provisional 31-second lead at the top of the GC.
A seated acceleration within the final kilometre from Vollering, who won the Tour de France Femmes in 2023 among other accolades, saw her distance Yara Kastelijn (Fenix-Deceuninck) and Elisa Longo Borghini (Lidl - Trek) who took second and third respectively.
The stage victory, her first race win in 2024, took her to the top of the general classification standings heading into stage six.
After the stage win, Vollering said: "I felt really really strong this season but it was not yet there. I had some podiums but the win took long for me this year. I'm really happy that I could do it here.
"Last year I had this beautiful jersey [Dutch champion] already but I was wearing the UCI [leader] jersey; I had so many wins last year but never in this pretty jersey and that was my goal for this season, to win at least a few times in this jersey before the Dutch championships again. I'm really happy that now at least I have a nice finish photo in this jersey.
"This red jersey, the [Vuelta Femenina] leader's jersey is of course a really pretty one and I hope I can keep it until the very end."
Reflecting on how the stage panned out, she added: "I just started to pace and actually I felt really really good and I just tried to keep going because I felt Elisa was also struggling a little bit on my wheel.
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'Really happy' Vollering hoping to keep red jersey 'until the very end' of Vuelta
"Then I just tried to give it all until the very end and I hope I get some time on her, that worked out so that's really nice and hopefully, a few more nice days coming for our team."
Vos, the GC leader going into the stage, dropped to ninth with a 2:07 gap to Dutch national champion Vollering, but moved up to first in the points classification with 115 after gaining extra points in the intermediate sprint to surpass Vollering’s SD Worx-Protime teammate Blanka Vas who moved into second on 103 points.
Karlijn Swinkels (UAE Team ADQ), who had earned a slight lead on the road before the final climb and took 10 points on the first of the two categorised climbs, retained the Queen of the Mountains jersey going into stage six with Vollering in second 10 points behind her after the summit victory earned her maximum points.
With 56km to go, Lourdes Oyarbide (Laboral Kutxa - Fundación Euskadi) went clear for the solo attack that eventually earned her the combativity jersey at the end of the stage.
The Spanish rider started the Alto del Monasterio de San Juan de la Pena climb with around a 27-second lead on the peloton, which was being pulled by Liv AlUla Jayco and Movistar.
After a crash in the bunch which took down multiple riders and forced Elena Hartmann (Roland) to abandon the race, Oyarbide was caught with just over 41km to go as Amber Kraak (FDJ - SUEZ) increased the pace at the front of the group to help them bridge the gap.
Kraak and her FDJ-SUEZ team-mates put in a stellar effort at the front of the race at multiple points in the remaining kilometres, namely Grace Brown who rode an impressive stage and was involved in the next attack with Antonia Niedermaier (Canyon//SRAM Racing) with 33km left.
They were swiftly brought back as an attack from Marlen Reusser (Team SD Worx - Protime), who was wearing the combativity jersey from the stage prior, led the bunch to the leading duo.
Multiple attacks followed from within the group before the first summit but it was Swinkels who added extra points to her QoM tally followed by Niamh Fisher-Black (Team SD Worx - Protime), stage four winner Kristen Faulkner (EF Education-Cannondale), Pauliena Rooijakkers (Fenix-Deceuninck), and Lidl-Trek’s Gaia Realini.
Realini crashed not long after and looked to be in quite some discomfort on the side of the road, but was helped back up by Brodie Chapman to eventually finish 53rd.
Aniek van Alphen (Fenix-Deceuninck) led a rapid descent at the front of the race after the climb before the small front group she had been with swelled at the base on their way into Jaca.
Swinkels attacked to go clear from the group with just over 12km left of the stage and earned a lead of around 20 seconds at one point before she took maximum points at the intermediate sprint with Vos taking second from the bunch behind her.
The QoM jersey wearer’s lead dropped after the sprint as the final climb and summit finish kicked into action and she was caught with 3.2km to go as Brown led the chase group onto Alto del Fuerte Rapitan.
Fellow Australian rider Sarah Gigante (AG Insurance - Soudal Team) took over from Brown, but her time at the front of the race was brief as Vollering soon worked her way to the head of the race, the position she would retain until the finish line.
Vollering’s pace dropped multiple riders including Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon//SRAM Racing) and Mavi Garcia (Liv AlUla Jayco), and it soon reached a point where the group had been splintered so much that the Dutch rider only had Kastelijn and Longo Borghini for company with just over 1.5km remaining.
The trio stayed together but with 792m left ahead of them Vollering powered ahead with a seated acceleration to go solo and she pushed on to take a solo victory at the summit by 28 seconds.
Kastelijn pipped the Italian national champion to take second place before Evita Muzic (FDJ - SUEZ) followed in fourth, 39 seconds behind the stage winner.
Gigante took fifth, Ricarda Bauernfeind (Canyon//SRAM Racing) sixth 44 seconds after Vollering, and Riejanne Markus (Team Visma-Lease a Bike) seventh on the same time.
The top 10 was completed by Juliette Labous (Team dsm-firmenich PostNL), Kim Cadzow (EF-Education Cannondale) and Rooijakkers.
Vollering, who finished second in all three classifications in the 2023 edition, will look to retain her lead in the general classification on stage six, another mountain stage, which covers 132.1km from Tarazona to La Laguna Negra and features a category one climb at the finish, reaching gradients of 13 and 14% on the way.
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