Jumbo Visma celebrate winning the La Vuelta Femenina TTT(Image credit: Getty Images)
Anna Henderson (Jumbo-Visma) in the Vuelta Femenina red leader's jersey(Image credit: Getty Images)
Jumbo-Visma were fast in the La Vuelta a Femenina TTT(Image credit: Getty Images)
Anna Kiesenhofer leads Israel-Premier Tech Roland at La Vuelta a Femenina(Image credit: Getty Images)
Urska Zigart leads Jayco-AlUla at La Vuelta a Femenina(Image credit: Getty Images)
Georgie Howe crashed during the La Vuelta a Femenina TTT(Image credit: Getty Images)
EF Education-Tibco-Svb in action in the TTT at La Vuelta a Femenina(Image credit: Getty Images)
UAE Team Adq at speed during the La Vuelta Femenina(Image credit: Getty Images)
Gladys Verhulst leads FDJ-Suez at La Vuelta Femenina(Image credit: Getty Images)
La Vuelta Femenina(Image credit: Getty Images)
SD Worx in the La Vuelta Femenina TTT(Image credit: Getty Images)
Annemiek van Vleuten leads Movistar at the La Vuelta Femenina(Image credit: Getty Images)
Trek-Segafredo was third in the La Vuelta Femenina TTT(Image credit: Getty Images)
Anna Henderson pulled on the first Vuelta Femenina red leader's jersey(Image credit: Getty Images)
Jumbo Visma took all the jerseys at the Vuelta Femenina(Image credit: Getty Images)
Jumbo Visma won the La Vuelta Femenina TTT(Image credit: Getty Images)
Jumbo-Visma won the team time trial that opened the 2023 La Vuelta Femenina by Carrefour.es. Over 14.5 kilometres through Torrevieja, the Dutch team set a time of 18:03 that none of the eight teams who started after them could beat.
Canyon-SRAM came closest and finished a second slower, Trek-Segafredo clocked the third-best time with 18:12 minutes. Having crossed the line first for her team, Anna Henderson takes the first red leader's jersey of the Vuelta Femenina.
“We are over the moon, it’s our first win of the women’s team all year, and to win together is just awesome. We’re super happy and proud of the performance that we did,” Henderson said.
“We did a really good course recon and made a good plan as a team with our race coaches. We just left it all out there and really believed in each other. It’s so nice to win together,” the new race leader continued.
Having started as the 15th of 23 teams, Henderson and her teammates had to wait in the hot seat for some time before they could be certain of victory. “It was the most nervous I was for the whole race, to be honest," she admitted.
"I was not nervous in the race because I knew we did a good performance as a team, but I was pretty nervous up there."
How it unfolded
The Sopela Women’s Team was first off the ramp in the Torrevieja, one of eight Spanish Continental teams participating in their national tour.
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Their time of 20:16 minutes put them in 20th place in the end, and the fight between the Spanish Continental teams was won by Massi-Tactic, who finished 14th in 19:29 minutes.
Israel-Premier Tech Roland, the first Women’s WorldTeam to start, cut 26 seconds off that but were themselves beaten by the next team on the road, St Michel-Mavic-Auber 93.
Liv Racing TeqFind were the first to go below 19 minutes in 18:45 minutes, Jayco-AlUla then improved on that by another 11 seconds despite an early crash for Georgie Howe.
Team Jumbo-Visma planned and executed their effort well, finishing with four of their seven riders together. Anna Henderson, Amber Kraak, Riejanne Markus, and Marianne Vos bettered the Australian team’s benchmark by more than 30 seconds to take the lead and set a high benchmark for their WorldTour rivals to beat.
Canyon-SRAM was three seconds behind the Dutch team at the intermediate timing point and made up time on the second half of the course but fell just short of the best time, finishing 0.53 seconds behind. Official results put them 1 second down on Jumbo-Visma.
Trek-Segafredo, Team SD Worx, and Movistar were all fast and disciplined in the 14.5km team time trial, but all lost seconds to Jumbo-Visma on the second part of the zig-zag shaped course, finishing in third, fifth, and fourth place, respectively.
Lukas Knöfler started working in cycling communications in 2013 and has seen the inside of the scene from many angles. Having worked as press officer for teams and races and written for several online and print publications, he has been Cyclingnews’ Women’s WorldTour correspondent since 2018.
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