Vuelta a Burgos Feminas: Vollering declared winner after Wiebes relegated

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Lorena Wiebes (Team SD Worx) was first over the finish line on stage 2 of the Vuelta a Burgos Feminas but was later relegated for impeding Chloé Dygert (Canyon-SRAM), giving the stage victory to Wiebes' teammate Demi Vollering.

After a wind-blown stage, echelons split the peloton early on, and only 12 riders reached the final kilometre together to sprint up the 500-metre cobbled climb in Lerma.

Vollering led out Wiebes, but the sprinter, intentionally or not, bodychecked Dygert when she accelerated on the rough cobblestones. After some deliberation, the race jury relegated Wiebes to third place for this move, making Vollering the stage winner and Dygert runner-up.

The peloton crossed the line over two minutes down.

"It was racing from the beginning, we had crosswind or tailwind almost all the time. It was a super-fast stage which made it exciting, and the group became smaller every time it was a crosswind. As a team, we did a really great lead-out to the final climb, it was a really hard finish, and it's great to finish number one and two," said Wiebes before her relegation was announced.

The Dutch sprinter keeps the overall lead going into stage 3, four seconds ahead of Dygert and Vollering.

How it unfolded

Covering 118.9km from Sotresgudo to Lerma, the stage generally travelled in a southeasterly direction, and the northwesterly winds made for a crosswind, tailwind, or a combination of both for most of the stage.

In these conditions, the race split into three after only 15km. There were 47 riders in the first peloton, but the size of this group was reduced further on the following crosswind sections.

Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig (FDJ-SUEZ) was the most high-profile rider to miss the front group, and her teammates worked hard to close the gap. Although they came close with a 19-second deficit at 70 km to go, the gap went out again afterwards.

In between the echelon action, Soraya Paladin (Canyon-SRAM) took the points on the day’s two classified climbs to defend her mountain jersey and also snatched three bonus seconds in the intermediate sprint.

More riders were dropped from the front group in the last 35 kilometres, leaving only Vollering, Wiebes, their teammates Reusser and Vas, Dygert and Paladin, as well as their teammate Agnieszka Skalniak-Sójka, Tamara Dronova (Israel-Premier Tech Roland), Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio (AG Insurance-Soudal Quick Step), and the Trek-Segafredo trio of Elisa Balsamo, Shirin van Anrooij, and Lucinda Brand to fight for the stage win.

Reusser led the group onto the cobbled climb to the finish, where Vollering took over with Wiebes, Balsamo, and Dygert in her wheel, opening a gap on the rest of the group. Wiebes accelerated 150 metres from the line and pushed past Dygert, who was coming up on her left side but was stripped of the stage victory because of that manoeuvre.

Results

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