Mischa Bredewold (SD Worx-Protime) won stage 5 of the Vuelta Femenina in Astorga as her teammate Lotte Kopecky held back in the uphill sprint, content to get a win for the team and defend her red jersey.
Letizia Paternoster (Liv AlUla Jayco) narrowly beat Agnieszka Skalniak-Sójka (Canyon-SRAM zondacrypto) to third place.
The last escapees were reeled in with 8.7km to go, and the stage was decided in a mass sprint on a 7% uphill finishing straight. Bredewold looked to be leading out Kopecky, but the red jersey chose not to come past and only controlled the other sprinters, making sure nobody came past her and letting her teammate take the win.
Going into the two mountain stages at the end of the race, Kopecky leads the GC with Franziska Koch (FDJ United-Suez), now 12 seconds behind.
"This finish is really similar to the one from last year where I came second, but we have of course a luxury position today with the red jersey and I’m just so grateful to the team that I had the freedom to share my ambitions about sprinting," Bredewold said at the finish.
"We are here together with Lotte and me, so you need to puzzle a bit with the stages. Especially today, with the red jersey, you don’t want to throw that away, that would be really stupid. We made an ideal plan to do it like this, that I get to sprint, I have Lotte in my wheel, and she would come over if she had to. I’m super happy to get the first victory.
“The girls did amazing, it was a headwind all day which made it really hard for them. They are so strong, big hats off to the girls."
In the final 1.5km of the race, there was a mass crash on wet road from a rainshower, with SD Worx-Protime’s GC leader Anna van der Breggen among the victims.
“It was scary because it was a really hectic final. Big roads all day and then the last 5km on narrow roads, it was pretty crazy. I think Anna is okay because I saw that she was not too bad, I hope the other girls are okay too. That crash made it really hectic, and then nobody had a real lead-out anymore,” said Bredewold.
How it unfolded
The 119.6-kilometre stage from León to Astorga included two third-category climbs, but as the last 37km were almost continuously downhill, a sprint was always the most likely outcome.
That didn’t stop Alice Coutinho (Mayenne-Monbana-My Pie), Marina Garau (Vini-Fantini-BePink), Aniek van Alphen (Fenix-Premier Tech), Sara Martín (Movistar), and Idoia Eraso (Laboral Kutxa-Fundación Euskadi) who came together to form a breakaway after 16km of racing.
They increased their advantage to 2:43 minutes at the bottom of the Collada de Olleros de Alba where Coutinho took maximum points in defense of her teammate Marine Allione’s mountain jersey, cresting the climb two minutes ahead of the bunch.
SD Worx-Protime put Valentina Cavallar and Julia Kopecký at the front of the peloton to control the breakaway, and the five escapees were 1:38 minutes ahead at the start of the second classified climb, the Alto de La Garandilla.
Garau was dropped from the break as she was unable to follow the others’ pace on the climb, and Coutinho led the race over the top 45.9km from the finish, scoring maximum points to assume the lead in the mountain classification from Allione due to her better GC placing. Coutinho then dropped back to the peloton on the descent towards Astorga.
The gap between the breakaway and the peloton had fallen to 45 seconds atop the climb and went down even further, but Martín, Eraso, and Van Alphen worked hard to pull one minute clear again with 29 km to go.
Paternoster was involved in a crash shortly afterwards, and although she had hurt her left wrist, the Italian returned to the peloton and eventually sprinted to third place on the stage.
With the peloton speeding up again towards the intermediate sprint 19km from the line, the break was only 15 seconds ahead but took the time bonifications, with Kopecky and Koch only sprinting for the remaining sprint points.
The gap went out to 28 seconds again, but SD Worx-Protime had worked all day to ensure a sprint, and the catch was made just inside 9km to go. As the sprint trains were lining up next to each other, a crash with 1.5km to go took out several riders, though the 5km rule came into effect to nullify any time losses.
At the 300-metre mark, Bredewold started what looked like a lead-out for Kopecky, but the team had analysed the finish well, and with Kopecky drifting to the right side of the road, Bredewold finished just ahead to claim the victory.
Results
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