Neve Bradbury (Canyon-SRAM) won stage 3 of the Tour de Suisse Women from Vevey to Champagne, rolling through the finish with her teammate Kasia Niewiadoma in second place. Femke de Vries (Visma-Lease a Bike) outsprinted Amanda Spratt (Lidl-Trek) for third place.
Bradbury and Elena Pirrone (Roland) had gone on a breakaway with 102km to go and were joined by Niewiadoma, Spratt, and De Vries on the second climb of the day. Working together, the five escapees built a three-minute gap on the peloton, and on the final climb, Niewiadoma and Bradbury pulled ahead.
Niewiadoma led 22-year-old Australian teammate up the climb and down the descent before sitting up on the finishing straight to let Bradbury take her first professional victory.
In the peloton, an acceleration by yellow jersey Demi Vollering (SD Worx-Protime) on the final climb dropped everyone but Elisa Longo Borghini, Gaia Realini (both Lidl-Trek), and Kim Cadzow (EF Education-Cannondale).
Bradbury also moved up to second overall. Going into the final stage, Vollering has a GC lead of 1:22 on Bradbury, 1:26 on Longo Borghini, and 1:28 on Realini.
“It’s crazy, I didn’t think at the start of today that I would be winning this stage. We really wanted to make it a hard race and win the stage, that’s what we did, it’s great. The plan was to let me get the win to get the bonus seconds for GC, it would have been nice to give Kasia the win because she was really strong out there,” said Bradbury.
How it unfolded
Starting on the shores of Lake Geneva and finishing at the Lake Neuchâtel, the third stage of Tour de Suisse Women covered 125.6km with four classified climbs. After passing through the finish, riders faced the second-category climb to Vaugondry, 4.3km at 6.7%, before descending back to Champagne.
After an early break was caught, Élise Chabbey (Canyon-SRAM) was first over the Chemin des Curnilles, safeguarding her red mountain jersey. The peloton then split in two on the rolling terrain, and eventually Bradbury and Pirrone went away, starting the second classified climb with a 40-second advantage.
When De Vries, Niewiadoma and Spratt bridged to them on the climb, the break of the day was established. Spratt was best-placed in GC in seventh place at 3:28, and SD Worx-Protime took the front of the peloton to control the gap.
As the breakaway’s advantage reached three minutes with 40km to go, Team dsm-firmenich PostNL joined in to protect Juliette Labous’ fifth place overall, bringing the gap down to 2:20 as they crossed the finish line for the first time.
Pirrone was dropped from the front group when the final climb began, and Spratt and De Vries lost contact with Niewiadoma and Bradbury soon after. Labous took the lead of the peloton for a while before Vollering herself increased the pace, reducing the group to only five riders.
Labous was soon dropped as well, leaving only Longo Borghini, Realini and Cadzow with the overall leader. At the top of the climb 13km from the finish, Niewiadoma and Bradbury were just over a minute ahead of De Vries and Spratt, the favourites’ group trailing at 1:29.
Niewiadoma went all-out on the descent to increase the advantage further, briefly putting Bradbury on the limit to follow the 29-year-old’s line while Vollering and Cadzow shared the work in the group of favourites.
Taking turns on the last kilometres, the two Canyon-SRAM riders reached Champagne, and Niewiadoma led them onto the finishing straight where she urged Bradbury forward to cross the line first as both riders lifted their arms to celebrate.
It was 1:55 minutes later that De Vries won the sprint against Spratt, and after 2:11 Longo Borghini sprinted to fifth ahead of Vollering, Realini and Cadzow. Bradbury moved up to second overall while Niewiadoma jumped to sixth place at 2:14, leapfrogging Labous, who dropped to seventh.
Results
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