Tour of California Women's Race: Van der Breggen seals overall

Elisa Balsamo (Valcar-Cylance Cycling) won the final stage of the Women's Tour of California, outsprinting Arlenis Sierra (Astana Women's Team) and Leigh Ann Ganzar (Hagens Berman-Supermint) in Pasadena on Saturday. With a bunch sprint to finish the race, yellow jersey Anna van der Breggen (Boels Dolmans) secured the overall victory – her third of the season.

"I have no words," said Balsamo after the stage. "This is my first WorldTour win and I'm so happy. I have to thank my teammates. I'm very happy.

"Yesterday was very hard, but we knew that today would be easier. It wasn't that easy, but I could stay with the first group on the climb and my team did a great job."

How it happened

Stage 3 took the peloton from Santa Clarita to Pasadena, covering 126 kilometres through the mountainous Angeles National Forest and finishing with three laps of a circuit around Rose Bowl Stadium.

The race was on from the start as many riders tried to attack, but it took until 94 km to go before a move by Lily Williams (Hagens Berman-Supermint) led to a group of 15 riders breaking away. Team Sunweb were represented in the break with white jersey Juliette Labous and Pernille Mathiesen, while Brodie Chapman (Tibco-Silicon Valley Bank) was best-placed overall, 1:47 minutes behind Van der Breggen.

The break started the climb up the Angeles Forest Highway 45 seconds ahead of the peloton, where Van der Breggen took matters into her own hands and took up the chase. The yellow jersey wearer bridged to the front on her own about halfway up the climb. Things calmed down a bit after this, enabling riders to come back from behind.

Jasmin Duehring (Sho-Air Twenty20) attacked next, taking Liliana Moreno (Astana Women's Team), Pauliena Rooijakkers (CCC-Liv), and WNT-Rotor teammates Erica Magnaldi and Kathrin Hammes with her. Moreno won the mountain sprint with 64 km to go, passing stage 2 winner Katie Hall in the QOM classification and winning the mountains jersey.

Ruth Winder (Trek-Segafredo), Hannah Barnes (Canyon-SRAM) and Labous caught up to the front on the descent, and the eight riders had eked out an advantage of 45 seconds at the start of the unclassified climb on Angel Crest Highway. Again, it was Van der Breggen who took responsibility for the chase. She had almost closed the gap when Rooijakkers counter-attacked and was joined by Hammes.

With their six former companions reeled in by the peloton, Rooijakkers and Hammes could build an advantage of 1:30 minutes. They still had 55 seconds after the high-speed descent into Pasadena, but as both had also been part of the large break earlier on the stage, they were starting to tire.

The gap had shrunk further to 30 seconds with three laps around the Rose Bowl left to race, and to less than 15 seconds at the start of the penultimate lap. Asian continental champion Olga Zabelinskaya (Cogeas Mettler Look) and Italian champion Marta Cavalli (Valcar-Cylance) bridged to Hammes and Rooijakkers and kept the break going, but the chasing peloton was only a few seconds behind by that point. For her efforts, Hammes was awarded the Most Courageous Rider jersey.

Cavalli put in a last-ditch attack as the break was finally reeled in, but she was caught in the final kilometre. US road race champion Coryn Rivera (Team Sunweb) was well positioned going into the sprint, but suffered a mechanical with 250 metres to go. Balsamo came around Ganzar 100 metres from the line, sprinting to her first UCI Women's WorldTour victory.

In addition to the yellow jersey for overall victory, Van der Breggen also toom home the green points jersey, while Labous won the white jersey for best young rider. The UCI Women's WorldTour ranking continues to be led by Annemiek van Vleuten (Mitchelton-Scott), who will return to defend her lead at the next race in the series: the Emakumeen Bira, starting on Wednesday 22 May.

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