The opening stage of the Tour de Suisse Women saw a surprise winner as Femke de Vries (Visma-Lease a Bike) outsprinted Lauren Dickson (FDJ United-Suez) in Sondrio after a 40km break.
The well-designed 109.3km stage in the Valtellina looked set to host the first GC showdown of many at the newly expanded five-day race, but the top favourites came up short. We analysed the day's racing to find out why.
After 56km of flat riding to start the day, the first climb to Buglia in Monte (2.9km at 10%) brought no major attacks. It did, however, reduce the peloton to 28 riders. The testing ascent, combined with temperatures above 25°C, sapped riders of energy at an early point of the stage.
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Both the hard climbs and the difficult weather were reminiscent of the 2025 Road World Championships in Kigali, Rwanda, which also saw a surprising – but far from random or undeserving – winner.
After the descent, the attacks started to fly. A first move by Franziska Koch (FDJ United-Suez) saw her get a small gap, with five riders in hot pursuit, then De Vries bridged across on her own, before another four riders made it across before the gaps were closed again.
The next attack came only a few hundred metres down the road when Karlijn Swinkels (UAE Team ADQ) made her move. Eight further riders immediately followed the Dutch racer as the rest of the peloton showed no reaction.
Instead, individual riders who had missed the move attacked from the peloton and tried to bridge across, eventually swelling the front group to 12 riders. The front group was now close to the two Tissot Time sprints, which offered time bonuses, and riders kept going to secure these bonus seconds.
Combined with the 'peloton' (if you can even call a group of 17 riders that) taking a breather, apparently happy with the group getting away, the 12 frontrunners gained 34 seconds in the span of less than five minutes.
From the bonus sprints, there were just over 7km to the start of the climb to Triangia. This stretch was far from flat, climbing about 200 altitude metres – but this was where a concerted chase effort could have kept the break's advantage in check. However, another ten riders came back to the peloton from behind, suggesting that the pace was not flat-out.
Movistar had taken position at the front of the pack, with Francesca Barale and Tota Magalhães working for Marlen Reusser, but there was no help from anyone else. Many teams had only one rider in the peloton and/or a rider in the break ahead, but EF Education-Oatly was an exception.
In addition to their GC leader, Cédrine Kerbaol, the pink-clad team had Axelle Dubau-Prévot, Alice Towers, Henrietta Christie, and Babette van der Wolf in the bunch but did not take responsibility for the chase. There is only so much two riders can do against 11 escapees (Zoe Bäckstedt was dropped on this stretch), and the gap went out to a minute.
Once the Triangia climb (4.2km at 7.1%) started, the window of opportunity had closed: Urška Zigart (AG Insurance-Soudal) set a hard pace that splintered the break but saw the three strongest climbers pull ahead, and the last 30km were almost always either uphill or downhill.
It is hard to make up time on a relatively fresh breakaway that hasn't been up the road for hours already, and even harder that the break consists of strong riders like Zigart (who would lose contact on the Triangia descent), Dickson, and De Vries.
Recognising the danger, Movistar called back Liane Lippert from the breakaway, but the German could not do much to reduce the gap. In the last 15km, EF Education-Oatly and UAE Team ADQ would join Movistar in the chase, but it was too little, too late, even with the final hill of Bordighi (1.1km at 11%) lying 5km from the
De Vries and Dickson held on comfortably to contest the win amongst themselves, while Kerbaol dashed away from a group of major GC contenders – including Elisa Longo Borghini, Marlen Reusser, and Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney – to take third place, 29 seconds later.
In the end, as in Kigali, the race rewarded riders who dared to go for a long-range attack on a hard course rather than waiting for the final.
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