Eneco Tour Women: Lieke Nooijen flies to second time trial win on stage 2 and retakes overall lead

Lieke Nooijen blasted to a second time trial stage win of the Eneco Tour Women on Thursday, overcoming some fierce competition in the stage 2 test in the Dutch town of Tilburg.

The Visma-Lease a Bike rider was the only competitor to stop the clock under 16 minutes over the 13.1km course, with Nienke Vinke (SD Worx-Protime) second, more than 20 seconds down, while stage 1 winner Sandrine Tas (Lotto-Intermarché) was third, a further second back.

Nooijen won the opening day’s prologue TT on Tuesday and now leads the GC standings, 20 seconds ahead of Tas, with Vinke third, with three stages left to race.

Nooijen has established herself as one of the best time trialists in the peloton this year and in this company was the clear favourite to win on Thursday. However, she will need to defend her lead on the ensuing stages, all of which have short punchy climbs, though the advantage she has built may well prove enough for her to take the overall come Sunday.

Nooijen had Charlotte Kool (Fenix-Premier Tech) not far in front as her carrot to chase, admitting that "Yes, of course, it always gives more motivation to beat her, and she was in front of me and came closer, but I didn’t catch her.

"It was hard, but I’m super happy to take my second victory on the TT bike here, and I had a lot of confidence since the time of the prologue," said Nooijen, with her eye on carrying the orange jersey all the way to the end.

"[There are] still three days to go. Also hard stages, so I think we can make a nice plan with our strong team, and also tomorrow it will be hard in Limburg, and then on Saturday on the Vam Berg, but you need to be sharp the whole race."

For its third day of racing, the Eneco Tour Women took on a 13.1km ITT effort with only 27m of elevation gain, almost completely flat, with a decent wind of around 15kph that was rarely at the riders’ back, though only with the first three kilometres into a full headwind.

First off the ramp was Austrian TT champion Christina Schweinberger, the Fenix-Premier Tech rider setting a time of 7:54 at the intermediate coming point and a finish time of 17:41. Second rider off was British new pro Robyn Clay (Picnic-PostNL), who stopped the clock just seven seconds slower than the Austrian, the two riders staying in first and second place respectively for some time.

Eventually Tess Moerman (AG Insurance-Soudal) overtook Clay before Slovakian champion Viktória Chladoňová (Visma-Lease a Bike) managed to usurp Schweinberger, having started as the 55th of the day’s 88 starters.

However, Chaladoňová was just the first of a number of faster times, with Silke Smulders (Liv-AlUla-Jayco), Femke De Vries (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Vinke all spending a while in the race lead until Nooijen overtook them all for victory.

Results

General classification after stage 2

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