Vos wins stage 1 of Giro Rosa

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Marianne Vos won the first stage in the Giro Rosa and also took the leader's jersey from her Rabo-Liv teammate Annemiek van Vleuten, who won the prologue on Friday night. Elisa Longo Borghini (Hitec) rode to second place ahead of Pauline Ferrand Prevot, the second Rabo-Liv rider on the podium.

Rabo-Liv was yet again the dominant team in the race. Having won 25 out of the last 32 races they participated in, the Dutch team has the best cards to play in the Giro Rosa. They occupied the first four places in the overall after the prologue.

The first stage was a technical and hard one in the town of Santa Maria a Vico, in the south of Italy. Annemiek van Vleuten started in the pink jersey with teammate Vos trailing behind by 0.81 seconds after Friday’s race opener.

The course was made up of 11 laps of 8,6 kilometres each with a short but steep climb every lap. With gradients of between 10% and 13%, the 1,800-metre long climb split the field on many occasions and many riders suffered. Lotto-Belisol’s climbing ace Emma Pooley suffered from continuous nose bleeds which caused her to lose valuable time.

Many attacks happened with the traditional solo effort from Orica-Greenedge’s Italian Vale Scandalora. Nothing stuck untill the final part of the race.

Race leader Van Vleuten was one of the many attackers as was South African champion Ashleigh Moolman for Hitec. They joined forces and gathered over a minute on the chasing peloton.

The breakaway group of two was joined by Chongming World Cup winner in 2013: Tatiana Riabchenko for S.C. Michela Fanini Rox but the gap was going down by that point. The three were eventually caught due to the work of Rabo-Liv who tried to control the hectic race situation.

Vos, Elisa Longo Borghini and her French teammate Audrey Cordon attacked the newly formed first group in the last 8.6-kilometre lap. Vos outsprinted Longo Borghini by over 25 metres to take her 12th UCI victory of the season. Flèche Wallonne winner Ferrand Prevot rode to a third place.

The overall classification is a Rabo-Liv and Hitec Products affair with the Hitec’s Longo Borghini and Moolman sitting in third and fifth. Rabo-Liv's three designated captains Vos, Ferrand Prevot and Anna van der Breggen sit in first, second and third positions respectively.

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