Women’s Tour: Team DSM’s chase runs out of steam on stage 4
Wiebes settles for 10th after breakaway holds on for victory
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Despite its best efforts on a hard day, Team DSM fell short of catching the breakaway on stage 4 of the Women’s Tour as Grace Brown (FDJ-Nouvelle Aquitaine-Futurscope) won in Welshpool.
On paper, the hilly parcours between Wrexham and Welshpool was not an obvious day for the sprinters, but DSM came close to bringing the race back together for Lorena Wiebes for a third consecutive day.
“It was a really tough stage today with lots of short climbs and narrow, twisty roads, so we knew it would be a challenge aiming for a sprint,” Pfeiffer Georgi said.
Once the day’s categorized climbs were over and with 10 riders up the road, DSM amassed at the front of the peloton and burnt through several riders trying to chase down the breakaway. A badly-timed puncture for Wiebes also threw a hurdle in DSM’s path.
“We had some bad timing with Lorena’s puncture as we were chasing the break,” Georgi said. “But the whole team came back and committed fully to the chase.”
Ultimately, the team ran out of firepower with too much road still to go. Going into the last 15km of the stage, Lorena Wiebes had just one teammate, Georgi, to try to deliver her to the finish.
The chase came within touching distance, bringing the leaders’ advantage down to less than 20 seconds at one stage, but even with some support from Movistar they could not quite close the gap to the motivated lead group.
“In the end we didn’t make it but I think we can be proud of the teamwork we showed today,” Georgi concluded.
Wiebes easily won the sprint from the peloton, finishing 10th and picking up one point in the points classification, but missed out on completing the treble.