Demi Vollering (SD Worx-Protime) won the stage 3 ITT to take the GC lead and the yellow jersey. The 2023 overall winner covered the 6.3-kilometre course through the centre of Rotterdam in 7:25 minutes, beating ITT world champion Chloé Dygert (Canyon-SRAM), Loes Adegeest (FDJ-Suez), and Cédrine Kerbaol (Ceratizit-WNT) by five seconds.
Charlotte Kool (Team dsm-firmenich PostNL) gave her all but finished 25 seconds slower than Vollering and had to relinquish the yellow jersey, but kept the green jersey for the points classification.
In the general classification, Vollering leads by three seconds over her teammate Lorena Wiebes, followed by Dygert, Adegeest, Kool and Kerbaol, all at five seconds.
“I really didn’t see this coming. I had no idea I could do this today, I’m really surprised, actually,” said an emotional Vollering at the finish.
“These first days were just days I needed to survive, and I wanted to really enjoy them. I had tomorrow’s stage in my head already because I love it, I really like Liège-Bastogne-Liège, and in the road stage today I was already thinking of tomorrow.
"After the road stage, before the TT, I was so relaxed, I did two power naps,” Vollering described her preparation for the stage 3 race against the clock.
The lack of expectation of having to perform gave Vollering some serenity, and she laughed at her Sport Director Anna van der Breggen’s comment that it was a course for her.
“Last year on the Tourmalet, that was the stage I needed to do it, here I had no expectations. I wasn’t even thinking of the podium, I thought it was for the sprinters and powerful time triallists.
"Anna said after she followed the first rider from my team, ‘it’s really a course for you’, and I was like, ‘yeah, I don’t know, we’ll see’. I just flew into it; I stayed so calm. It was a strange day for me, I cannot believe it yet,” said the new yellow jersey.
Having taken time on all her GC rivals, Vollering and her team now face the task of defending the lead.
“It's up to the other teams to take the yellow jersey from our team now. And it’s nice to have it, for sure we will try to defend it to the very end, but the plan was to take it a little bit later in the week, so I’m really surprised to have the yellow jersey already,” she finished.
How it unfolded
Third of 148 starters Maëva Squiban (Arkea-B&B Hotels) was the first to finish in less than eight minutes, but her time of 7:5 was quickly improved upon by Elena Pirrone (Roland), who stopped the clock after 7:44. It then took 25 minutes until Adegeest took the lead with a time of 7:30.52.
Her teammate and Olympic ITT champion Grace Brown suffered a rear puncture, putting her out of the running for the stage victory as she lost about 30 seconds. Ellen Van Dijk (Lidl-Trek) beat Adegeest’s intermediate time but fell just over a second short at the finish; the same was true for Kristen Faulkner (EF-Oatly-Cannondale).
Dygert was three seconds faster than Adegeest at the intermediate timing point, and this was just enough to set a new best time, 0.17 seconds faster than Adegeest. Vollering matched Dygert’s intermediate time and kept going on the last part of the course, taking the lead with 7:25.
Kerbaol was within two seconds of Vollering at the intermediate check and also finished in 7:30, only 0.12 seconds slower than Adegeest for fourth place.
The fight for the stage win was over now, but the sprinters whohad won time bonifications on the first two stages could still hope to keep some of their buffer on Vollering.
Neither Elisa Balsamo (Lidl-Trek) nor Marianne Vos (Visma-Lease a Bike) succeeded, losing 23 and 18 seconds to Vollering, respectively. Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx-Protime) came closest, but her time of 7:34 put her three seconds behind her teammate.
When Anniina Ahtosalo (Uno-X Mobility) finished in 7:52 and Kool stopped the clock after 7:50, it was clear that Vollering would start stage 4 in the yellow jersey.
Results
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