The battle for the overall title of the Tour de Suisse Women continues as a two-horse race between race leader Marlen Reusser (Movistar) and Demi Vollering (FDJ-Suez) heading into the final two stages, with the duo's rivalry getting tetchy as the race progresses.
Reusser and Vollering escaped with a long-range attack on stage 1 to go well clear of their prospective GC rivals, with the Swiss woman taking the stage win with Vollering missing out in the two-up sprint and saying afterwards that her rival "could give a bit extra" in sharing the workload.
On Friday's second stage, the pair came home equally matched at 3:13 down on the breakaway winner, Vollering's teammate Amber Kraak. However, a trio of GC rivals, including Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney (Canyon-Sram Zondacrypto), got clear on a late climb to gain 30 seconds on the pair.
After the stage, when asked about the role of her rivalry with Vollering in seeing Niewiadoma, Mavi García, and Elise Chabbey regain time, Reusser tried her best to stay diplomatic.
"That's a good question. Now I need to see how I formulate this," Reusser told CyclingPro, carefully considering her response.
"I would say that Demi isn't the person to take a lot of responsibility in these moments. I think she's panicking a lot.
"If she would just do a bit more normal in the race, then maybe we would not get into dangerous situations so much. So, I just try to work it back and do normal, but it's not always easy."
As things stand, Reusser heads into Saturday's stage 3 retaining her four-second advantage over Vollering in second place. Niewiadoma is still third, though closes in to 1:21 off the race lead, while Chabbey and García lie at 1:55 and 1:59 back.
Reusser said the closer gaps are "interesting for the race. It would be much more interesting if it was up to Demi, I would say," but she was at least pleased that the breakaway grabbed the time bonuses at the line.
"Everything is the same as yesterday. Kasia won a bit of time, but I think it should be OK, so it's OK. It's not super good or super bad. It's just OK," Reusser said.
"For us, it was good to have a breakaway because then the bonus seconds are gone at the finish line.
"As long as the break doesn't win with more than eight minutes, we were fine with it. We used the climbs to pace it a bit, and for the rest. we just let the race be the race. and it was OK."
