'Not feeling fit enough to continue' – Pauline Ferrand-Prévot withdraws from La Vuelta Femenina

Pauline Ferrand-Prévot is out of La Vuelta Femenina ahead of Thursday's stage 5, her Visma-Lease A Bike team have announced.

The Frenchwoman, who won Paris-Roubaix Femmes earlier this spring, is "not feeling fit enough to continue the race", the Dutch team stated in a post on social media on Thursday morning.

Ferrand-Prévot lay 34th overall, 38 seconds off race leader Femke Gerritse (SD Worx-Protime) heading into Wednesday's fourth stage to Borja. However, she was among several Visma-Lease A Bike riders to drop on the final climb of the hilly stage, Puerto de El Buste.

While stage 2 winner Marianne Vos led the main group home 12 seconds behind solo stage winner Anna van der Breggen (SD Worx-Protime), Ferrand-Prévot lost more time, finishing in 32nd at 26 seconds down.

She lay in 25th overall, 58 seconds down on Gerritse, at the conclusion of stage 4.

Speaking after the stage, Visma-Lease A Bike directeur sportif Jos van Emden criticised Ferrand-Prévot for the time loss, saying she "shouldn't have been dropped on a climb like this", considering she was fighting for a high GC finish.

"If you start the Vuelta with ambitions for the GC, you should not be dropped on a climb like this," he told WielerFlits on Wednesday. "Unfortunately, that did happen. Now it will be difficult to play a significant role in the classification, but we will not give up the fight yet."

Vos continues to lead the points classification for the team with 170 points to Gerritse's 132. However, she isn't expected to retain her third place overall during Thursday's summit finish GC showdown at Lagunas de Neila. Visma's next best-placed riders, Femke De Vries and Imogen Wolff, lie over three minutes off the race lead.

"I went for the highest possible, but a second place was not possible today," Vos said after stage 4. "I really had to fight hard to stay with it. When Anna went, I knew it would be difficult to catch her again."

Ferrand-Prévot's withdrawal isn't the first disappointment of the race for Visma-Lease A Bike. The team finished 10th, 21 seconds off the lead, in the opening team time trial in Barcelona after they were held up at the start by what they called "errors in the UCI's team time trial start procedure."

The team filed an official complaint alleging that their riders were held up by other teams arriving late and UCI officials carrying out slow bike checks ahead of the stage start. Visma stated that they would "pursue further steps and file a formal complaint with the UCI management."