Mischa Bredewol and Eleonora Camilla Gasparrini two-up sprint on stage 6(Image credit: Getty Images)
Jumbo-Visma(Image credit: Getty Images)
Mischa Bredewold celebrates as best young rider(Image credit: Getty Images)
Lorena Wiebes (Team DSM) won the overall classification at the 2022 Simac Ladies Tour, as Mischa Bredewold (Parkhotel Valkenburg) won the final stage ahead of Eleonora Gasparrini (Valcar-Travel & Service) after the two got away in the final kilometres.
The final 150km stage was made very hard by attacks on a hilly circuit, and Wiebes was isolated and without teammates very early on. A break that included Amanda Spratt (Team BikeExchange-Jayco), Soraya Paladin (Canyon-SRAM), and Elynor Bäckstedt (Trek-Segafredo) got away but the peloton came back together for the finale.
An attack by Alison Jackson (Liv Racing Xstra) was also brought back but the counter-attack by Bredewold and Gasparrini succeeded and went all the way to the line where Bredewold held off the Italian to take her first Women's WorldTour victory.
Five seconds later, Wiebes took third place in the sprint to seal her overall victory.
“I didn’t expect to win yellow, but it’s nice that I can finish the week like this, and I am happy with how all the stages went. Especially the stage in South Limburg, I didn’t expect that beforehand, and it gave me extra motivation for the time trial,” Wiebes said after the stage.
“We were going to do everything to keep it. It did get tense when the three were in front by over three minutes, but we were confident, and the pressure was higher on Jumbo in the end. I was still on the final podium and the girls from Jumbo weren’t, so we tried to put the pressure on them there.
"After the hills we still had Leah (Kirchmann) and Franzi (Koch), then we put Leah to work, and she did a really great job in her last WorldTour race. I am happy to be able to give her this as a present, and I think we will have a cake and hopefully some champagne.”
Wiebes celebrated her third Women’s WorldTour GC victory after the 2019 Tour of Chongming Island and 2022 RideLondon Classique but her first in a six-day stage race with hilly stages and a time trial.
How it unfolded
The final stage was ridden on two circuits: Seven laps on a hilly 14-kilometre circuit with climbs of the Emmapiramide and Zijpenberg followed by a short stretch to an 8-kilometre circuit in Arnhem that was raced for five-and-a-half laps.
Team Jumbo-Visma in particular wanted to make the race hard in order to tire out Wiebes and her teammates. A first attack by Maëlle Grossetête (FDJ SUEZ Futuroscope), Silke Smulders (Liv Racing Xstra), and polka-dot jersey Kirstie van Haaften (Parkhotel Valkenburg) was quickly reeled in, but a new move with Grossetête, Van Haaften, Jeanne Korevaar (Liv Racing Xstra), and Eline van Rooijen (AG Insurance-NXTG) got away on the second lap.
On the third lap, Grossetête won the first QOM sprint to reduce her deficit to Van Haaften by two points, and the break was over a minute ahead after 35 km. An acceleration by Jumbo-Visma’s Anna Henderson and Riejanne Markus reduced this to only 15 seconds and split the peloton as a group of 11 riders held a 10-second lead on a peloton of 38 riders.
The break was caught soon afterwards, but the climbs caused another split on the fourth lap. Wiebes was in the first peloton of 25 but had no teammates to support her. Van Haaften attacked to take maximum points at the second QOM sprint which would eventually be enough for her to secure the polka-dot jersey.
After a short-lived attack by Clara Lundmark (GT Krush Tunap Pro Cycling), Spratt, Paladin, and Bäckstedt went away on the fifth time up the Zijpenberg as Markus and Wiebes chose not to close them down immediately. Spratt’s initiative here and earlier in the race netted her the day’s combativity prize.
With nobody in the peloton chasing the new break, the dropped riders came back again, giving Wiebes crucial team support, and the gap had ballooned to 3:50 minutes when the race left the hilly circuit for the finishing laps with 54km to go.
Team Jumbo-Visma, Team DSM, and Plantur-Pura slowly but steadily reduced that gap and caught the break on the penultimate lap, 13km from the finish. Right away, Jackson attacked with Tamara Dronova (Roland Cogeas Edelweiss Squad) unsuccessfully trying to bridge to her.
Audrey Cordon-Ragot (Trek-Segafredo), only six seconds behind Wiebes in GC, made her move with 9 km to go and caught up to Jackson as the bell rang out for the final lap, but so did the rest of the peloton.
Bredewold then attacked on the uphill part of the circuit after the finish line, and Gasparrini jumped across. Working together well, they held off the peloton, and Bredewold had the better sprint after a hard race to take the win as well as the white U23 jersey.
Wiebes secured her yellow jersey with third place and also won the green points jersey.
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.
