Tour de l'Avenir Femmes: Van Empel wins stage 3 from reduced bunch sprint
Niedermaier continues as race leader for third stage
Fem van Empel (Netherlands) captured the stage 3 bunch sprint on Wednesday at the Tour de l'Avenir Femmes. From the group of 20 riders Dominika Wlodarczyk (Poland) took second place, holding off Gaia Masetti (Italy), who finished third.
Van Empel earned her second podium in as many days, finishing third on stage 2. She accelerated to the front of the race with under 200 metres to go and rode away from her challengers across the uphill finish line.
“Yeah, a great feeling. Yesterday, I finished third. I was in good position but I was unlucky that I couldn’t finish it off. But today, we made a good plan. We were in a very good position on the last climb. Shirin van Anrooij and Nienke Vinke did a very good job, and yeah, we finished it off,” Van Empel said after earning her first road victory of the season.
“I wore the polka-dot jersey today, so my goal was to take points on the climbs. When the legs are good, then we can go for a sprint. It worked today.”
The top three riders on GC marked each other in the finale, with race leader Antonia Niedermaier (Germany) crossing the line in 10th position, three spots behind second-placed Anna Shackley (Great Britain) and with third-placed Shirin van Anrooij (Netherlands) on her back wheel. Niedermaier retained a 14-second advantage over Shackley and a 23-second margin over Anrooij with two days remaining.
Nathalie Quinn (USA) went on a solo attack for close to 30km near the end of the 97.3km charge to Val d’Epy, but with 15km to go the peloton pulled her back to set up the sprint finish.
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Jackie has been involved in professional sports for more than 30 years in news reporting, sports marketing and public relations. She founded Peloton Sports in 1998, a sports marketing and public relations agency, which managed projects for Tour de Georgia, Larry H. Miller Tour of Utah and USA Cycling. She also founded Bike Alpharetta Inc, a Georgia non-profit to promote safe cycling. She is proud to have worked in professional baseball for six years - from selling advertising to pulling the tarp for several minor league teams. She has climbed l'Alpe d'Huez three times (not fast). Her favorite road and gravel rides are around horse farms in north Georgia (USA) and around lavender fields in Provence (France), and some mtb rides in Park City, Utah (USA).
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