Lotte Kopecky, of Team SD Worx, retained the overall lead in the Tour de France Femmes, after her teammate Lorena Wiebes sprinted to victory in stage three from Collonges-la-Rouge to Montignac-Lascaux in the Dordogne.
Wiebes, winner of two stages in last year’s race, took her third success in the Tour after a last-gasp chase reeled in the day’s solo breakaway, Julie Van de Velde, of the Fenix-Deceuninck team.
The 30-year-old was the main animator of the stage, attacking alone from the peloton and building a healthy two-minute lead with 34km still to race. But her advantage was steadily eroded on the run-in to the finish, on the banks of the Vézère, although with 4km left she still led by 30 seconds.
Despite a gusting headwind, Van de Velde led through the last bend and into the final straight, with victory in sight, but as she entered the last 200 metres, her legs failed her. Kopecky, Wiebes and Marianne Vos, of Jumbo-Visma, flew by with the 24-year-old Wiebes taking the win from Vos.
Meanwhile, the Colombian national time trial champion, Miguel Ángel López, a stage winner in the 2020 men’s Tour de France, has been provisionally suspended by world cycling’s governing body, the UCI, after a potential doping violation in the weeks before the 2022 Giro d’Italia. He was sacked by his Astana Qazaqstan team in December last year.
