Tour de Suisse Women: Marlen Reusser outsprints Demi Vollering in breakaway duel to win stage 1

Marlen Reusser (Movistar) won stage 1 of the Tour de Suisse Women, beating Demi Vollering (FDJ-SUEZ) in a sprint à deux in Gstaad. Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM zondacrypto) finished third from a chase group of three, 1:41 minutes behind.

Reusser attacked after the top of the first-category Jaunpass, flying down the descent, and Vollering bridged to her with considerable effort. From there, they effectively rode a pair TT together for 57km, sharing the time bonifications at the two bonus sprints and building an advantage of over two minutes on the chase group of Niewiadoma-Phinney, Niamh Fisher-Black, and Urška Žigart, with the next group even further back.

Reusser attacked 2.2km from the finish line but could not shake Vollering who then stayed on Reusser's wheel all the way to the finishing straight which meant that their advantage shrank again.

Vollering started her sprint with 250 metres to go, and it looked like she had beaten Reusser, but the Swiss woman came back and passed Vollering on the last 100 metres to win the stage and take the leader's jersey.

“It all went perfect, perfect, perfect, and I’m super happy. I think she [Vollering] went a bit early [in the sprint], it was perfect,” Reusser was happy about her stage win in the post-race interview.

“It was really our plan to make it a very, very small group, or if I’m alone, even, we didn’t care either. After that climbing, when the climb is hard, it’s going to be small groups that all have to push. There will be people looking at each other, there will not be so much cohesion, so you know that with not too big of an effort, you can go pretty far.

"We thought even if a group would come back, everybody needed to work, so it’s not so risky,” Reusser explained her long-range attack.

She now leads the GC with four seconds on Vollering and 1:51 minutes to Niewiadoma.

“Of course, it’s the goal [to defend the yellow jersey], although I have to say, it’s not going to be easy, and the result, we will see in the end. But we will try, of course,” finished Reusser.

How it unfolded

Starting and finishing in Gstaad, the stage covered 95.5km on a large anti-clockwise loop through the Berner Oberland and parts of the cantons of Fribourg and Vaud. The two climbs of the Sannenmöser and Jaunpass came in the first third of the stage, with the rest of the stage mainly flat (for Switzerland, that is).

The peloton stayed together over the Sannenmöser climb where Morgane Coston (Roland) took the QOM points, but the lower slopes of the Jaunpass reduced the peloton to about 30 riders as Movistar set a hard pace.

Femke de Vries (Visma-Lease a Bike) attacked 4km from the top, but when Sarah Gigante (AG Insurance-Soudal) went after her and closed the gap, she brought the rest of the peloton with her.

Gigante attacked again 3.1km from the top, and when Reusser, Niewiadoma-Phinney, Vollering Žigart, Cédrine Kerbaol (EF Education-Oatly), Fisher-Black, and Mavi García (Liv-AlUla-Jayco) reeled her in with 2.2km to the QOM sprint, the selection was made.

García and Kerbaol couldn’t follow the pace that was set by Reusser and Gigante, and the Australian led the group of six over the QOM summit, taking maximum points and moving into the red mountain jersey.

After a breather at the back of the group, Reusser attacked into the descent, quickly opening a gap. Only Vollering was able to come back halfway down the mountain, and the two former teammates settled into a steady rhythm, trading turns equally on the way back to Gstaad.

They rolled through the Tissot kilometre, two bonus sprints within 1,000 metres of each other at 16km and 15km to go, with Vollering taking the first one and Reusser the second, both gaining five bonus seconds each. Behind them by 1:37, Niewiadoma-Phinney attacked her companions Fisher-Black and Žigart to take the two remaining bonus seconds before sitting up again. The group of 23 riders behind those three was 2:50 down.

In the final, the gap to the chase group had risen to over two minutes, but when Reusser attacked and Vollering did not let her get away, Vollering refused to take any more turns on the last two kilometres. This cat-and-mouse game meant that the chase groups made up time again, finishing at 1:42 and 2:14, respectively.

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