Baloise Ladies Tour: Charlotte Kool secures first win of the season in stage 2 sprint

Charlotte Kool (Team dsm-firmenich PostNL) secured her first win of the season on stage 2 at the Baloise Ladies Tour. Kool outsprinted Daria Pikulik (Human Powered Health) and Sara Fiorin (UAE Development Team) in Zulte.

“Today, I think everything finally fell into place for us. We showed once again that we have an amazingly strong team and lead out," Kool said.

"In all of the other races, we showed that already, but things just didn’t go right for us in the final, or we missed something, but now it went perfectly. I’m just really happy, and this is a well-deserved win for the whole team.”

Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx-Protime) maintained the lead in the overall classification heading into the final weekend of the race, which offers two stages on Saturday and the final on Sunday.

Stage 2 at the Baloise Ladies Tour offered an undulating 126.8km race in Zulte. The route began with a large circuit that included two cobbled sectors on each lap, Nokereberg and Herlegemstraat, along with the Hulsepontweg, with the field completing three full circuits.

They then crossed the finish line with just over 50km to go and completed five short, flat finishing circuits.

Noä Jansen (Liv AlUla Jayco) attacked off the start line and gained 25 seconds on the field. While she picked up full time bonuses at the first intermediate sprint, she was reabsorbed back into the field 10km into the race.

A two-rider move emerged ahead of the second Nokereberg ascent of the day that included Olha Kulynych (Fenix-Deceuninck) and Sigrid Ytterhus Haugset (Team Coop-Repsol), who opened a 40-second gap on lone chaser Noemi Rüegg (EF Education-Cannondale).

The two leaders maintained a 1:30 gap to the main peloton with 30km to go but were caught in the closing kilometres of the stage.

As the teams with powerful sprinters lined up their lead-out trains, it looked as though SD Word-Protime might claim a third consecutive victory. However, Team dsm-firmenich PostNL led their sprinter, Kool, into the final to secure her first stage win of the season.