Ladies Tour of Norway: Annemiek van Vleuten wins stage 3 atop summit of Norefjell

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Annemiek van Vleuten (Movistar Team) has stamped her name on the first-ever mountaintop finish in the Ladies Tour of Norway. When the Olympic ITT champion and leader of the Women's WorldTour attacked on the steepest part of the Norefjell climb with three kilometres to go, only Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio (Team SD Worx) and Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig (FDJ Nouvelle-Aquitaine Futuroscope) could follow, but Van Vleuten dropped them both on the next 500 metres and soloed to the stage win.

Moolman-Pasio was the next to cross the line 35 seconds later followed by Mavi García (Alé BTC Ljubljana), who passed Uttrup Ludwig on the final kilometre and took third place, 41 seconds down, with her teammate Marlen Reusser in fourth at 44 seconds. Uttrup Ludwig finished fifth, 48 seconds behind the stage winner.

Van Vleuten took the yellow leader’s jersey with one stage to go with a 39-second advantage over Moolman Pasio and 47 seconds over Garcia.

How it unfolded

Starting in Drammen, stage 3 covered 145 kilometres that included one classified climb and two intermediate sprints before the mountaintop finish at Norefjell. 

The 11.1-kilometre finishing climb had an average gradient of 6.1 per cent, with the steepest parts, above 8 per cent, coming right at the start of the climb and on the third-to-last kilometre.

Despite several attacks, nobody succeeded in getting away from the peloton in the first half of the race. Brodie Chapman (FDJ Nouvelle-Aquitaine Futuroscope) was the first to be let go, but Ann Helen Olsen (Team Coop-Hitec Products) who tried to bridge to Chapman was reeled in again with 70km to go.

Chapman’s advantage fluctuated between 22 seconds and a minute until Norwegian champion Vita Heine (Norway) attacked from the peloton with 55km left to race and quickly joined Chapman. Together, they extended their gap to a maximum of 1:40 minutes with 30 kilometres to go.

However, the peloton never settled down, and there were several attacks as it started to rain. Sophie Wright (Alé BTC Ljubljana) tried to bridge to Chapman and Heine on her own and was later joined by Femke Markus (Parkhotel Valkenburg), but they never reached the front and were eventually caught again with 17 kilometres to go.

The peloton reached Heine and Chapman two kilometres before the start of the climb where the race quickly fell apart on the steep gradients. Liane Lippert (Team DSM) went to work in support of her teammate Labous and reduced the first group to about 30 riders, then Canyon-SRAM’s Ella Harris and Mikayla Harvey took over for Elise Chabbey.

Niamh Fisher-Black (Team SD Worx) made the first attack 6.7km from the line, but after a kilometre, her move was neutralised by Lippert. Moolman-Pasio immediately counterattacked and had Van Vleuten, Uttrup Ludwig, Kristen Faulkner (Team TIBCO-Silicon Valley Bank), Labous and Reusser following her, but this attack did not get away, and the group settled down for a while with Faulkner setting the pace.

Moolman-Pasio made another move just before the steepest section of the climb that blew the group apart, and this time, Van Vleuten counterattacked. Continuing at a high pace on the steepest kilometre of the climb, Van Vleuten was alone in front when the road flattened out somewhat with two kilometres to go and rode to another convincing victory.

Van Vleuten now holds a comfortable lead in the general classification, Fisher-Black took over the white U23 jersey with an eighth place on the stage. Faulkner defended her green jersey against Alison Jackson (Liv Racing) at the two intermediate sprints and goes into the final stage with a two-point lead over the Canadian. Nina Buysman (Parkhotel Valkenburg) defended the mountain jersey by winning the day’s first QOM sprint in Komperud and needs only one point from the two classified climbs on stage 4 to win the QOM classification.