Boels Ladies Tour: Van Vleuten wins prologue for third year in a row

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Annemiek van Vleuten (Mitchelton-Scott) won the prologue of the 2019 Boels Ladies Tour, taking the first leader's jersey of the six-day stage race. On a technical 3.8-kilometre prologue in the Tom Dumoulin Bike Park in Sittard, the world time trial champion set a time of 5:04 minutes, beating German time trial champion Lisa Klein (Canyon-SRAM) by six seconds and Lucinda Brand (Team Sunweb) by seven seconds.

"There's always a bit of uncertainty how you come back from altitude," said Van Vleuten after winning her first race after an altitude training camp. "Especially on this course with many corners, you need to accelerate a lot, and that's not something I trained much in the last four weeks. If you make one mistake on this course, for example, start the steep hill in the wrong gear, you lose. But I could see that my numbers at altitude were really good and had confidence coming here."

Van Vleuten has now won the Boels Ladies Tour prologue three years in a row. In 2017 and 2018, she went on to keep the leader's jersey throughout the race and win the race overall, but Van Vleuten said this will not be the case this year.

"I am not here for the GC at all. When I saw the course, I was a bit disappointed that there is no time trial and no hard, hilly stage. When you come here to prepare for the World Championships, I think they should have at least one or two hard stages. This year it's more a course for the sprinters. That will mean that I'm not going to defend this jersey with my team. We will go for stage wins and have some fun without pressure this year."

How it unfolded

Held in the purpose-built and landscaped Tom Dumoulin Bike Park, the twisty prologue included 16 turns as well as a 350-metre, slightly uphill cobblestone section with a sharp 180-degree turn at the end and a short, punchy climb.

Christine Majerus (Boels Dolmans) set the first benchmark with 5:15 minutes. This time stood for half an hour until Klein took another five seconds off the clock, slotting into the lead. Both former world time trial champion Lisa Brennauer (WNT-Rotor) and Brand could not beat Klein's time, respectively being three seconds and one second slower.

European time trial champion Ellen van Dijk (Trek-Segafredo) was among the favourites to win the prologue, but she suffered a mechanical in the sharp turn after the cobblestone section, causing her to tumble down the hill. Though she got back up and finished, Van Dijk lost a lot of time and finished 1:48 minutes slower than the eventual winner.

Due to the crash, Anna van der Breggen (Boels Dolmans) passed Van Dijk on her way to a time of 5:13 minutes. Van Dijk's teammate Letizia Paternoster beat Van der Breggen's time by less than a second, squeezing in before Brennauer and the road world champion with the third-best time at that moment.

Wearing the number 1 and starting last, Van Vleuten had memorised the course well. The world time trial champion sped through the turns and up the short hill, and her time of 5:04 minutes gave her the stage win and the first leader's jersey.