Canyon-SRAM arrived at the Tour de Suisse Women with a strong team, and after three days of racing the squad had three stage podiums, leads in the mountains and young rider classifications and three riders in the GC top 10.
Élise Chabbey took a third place on stage 1 from the breakaway but made clear that she wasn’t targeting the overall. Neve Bradbury emerged as the team’s best GC card after the stage 2 ITT, and the team went looking for opportunities on stage 3, sending Bradbury and Kasia Niewiadoma into the breakaway.
That tactic paid off handsomely in Champagne with Canyon-SRAM going 1-2 on the stage, and Bradbury claimed her first victory at a UCI race. It also propelled the 22-year-old rider from Australia to second overall, 1:22 behind leader Demi Vollering (SD Worx-Protime). Niewiadoma jumped to sixth overall and teammate Antonia Niedermaier held on to ninth.
With one day remaining, a smile came back on Niewiadoma’s face after the first two stages did not go well for her.
“The first two days were terrible for me, coming down from altitude and just having terrible legs. I was very upset about that, and today was just a stage to regain the pleasure of racing and having fun. We did that to perfection, so we are super happy about it," Niewiadoma said after the 125.6km stage.
"The tactic was for us to basically have fun. At the end of the day, we all ride our bikes because we love this sport, so it was really nice to be out there and do what we love the most."
With two riders in a break of five, Niewiadoma and Bradbury were in a very good situation. They had planned to make the most of it on the final climb but were surprised by the ease with which they could pull away.
“Actually, the plan was for Kasia to do the pace at the bottom of the climb, and then for me to attack because we weren’t sure how the other riders were feeling. She went to the front, and soon after, it was just us two, and we were like, ‘yeah, we just go full-gas now and get as much time as we can’," Bradbury explained.
"And we wanted me to win the stage to get the 10 bonus seconds since I was a little bit further ahead on the GC."
Even without the GC considerations, though, Niewiadoma – herself not a rider who wins a lot of races – was happy to let her 22-year-old Australian teammate take the victory, her first as a pro, as a gesture of thanks.
“Neve has been working for me so many times, so to say thank you in this way was a pleasure for me. In my mind, it was all about trying to make my teammate get to the top, either in GC or in the stage. It’s great for me to be able to finally give it back because it doesn’t happen that often,” said Niewiadoma.
Bradbury carries a six-second time gap over Gaia Realini (Lidl-Trek) to lead the best young rider classification. Chabbey has all but confirmed the best climber prize with a 12-point lead over Realini.
The final day of racing on Tuesday is a 127.5km route with two classified climbs and the finish back in Champagne.
