Biking excellent Vos wins first phase of ladies’s Trip de
PLUMELEC, France (AP)– Cycling great Marianne Vos won the opening stage of the ladies’s Trip de France with a fantastic late attack on Saturday.The 38-year-old Dutchwoman surpasses her Visma– Lease a Bike teammate Pauline Ferrand-Prévot approaching the line, and after that held off Mauritian rider Kim Le Court in the closing meters of a grueling uphill finish.Advertisement Ferrand-Prévot looked set to win the stage, however the Frenchwoman assaulted too early from 600
meters and could not withstand the late surge from Vos, who punched the air with her left fist as she crossed the line.Moments later, Vos hugged an exhausted-looking Ferrand-Prévot, the Paris-Roubaix winner.”I didn’t now if Pauline was still hanging in the surface, but in the end I sprinted a bit with Kim, “Vos said, applauding her teammate
‘s effort.”I’m really grateful to the team and to Pauline. “The hilly 78.8-kilometer(48.9-mile)route from Vannes to Plumelec in Brittany included 2 little climbs up and was finished
in 1 hour, 53 minutes, 3 seconds by Vos– a multiple world champ, a previous Olympic roadway race champion and a silver medalist at last year’s Paris Games.Advertisement Former Olympic time-trial silver medalist Marlen Reusser was one of 10 riders to crash some 30 kilometers from completion. She continued for a while but was plainly struggling and needed to
desert the stage.Sunday’s second stage from the port city of Brest to Quimper remains in Brittany and is a little more uneven and longer at 110.4 kilometers.The nine-stage race, which ends Aug. 3, started a day before completion of the males’s Trip, set to be won for a 4th time by Slovenian star Tadej Pogačar by a comfy margin.The females’s race could be far closer.Last year provided the tiniest winning margin in the history of the women’s and guys’s races, with Polish rider Kasia Niewiadoma beating 2023 champ Demi Vollering by 4 seconds, and Pauliena Rooijakkers only 10 seconds off the rate in third location. ___ AP sports: https://apnews.com/sports