Marlen Reusser gives Movistar the lead in the women’s Tour after an impeccable time
With an extraordinary performance, the Swiss cyclist Marlen Reusser (Movistar) did justice to her mastery in time trials and won the fourth stage of the women’s Tour in a big way, an individual time trial of a more than respectable 21 kilometers by women’s distance standards. Reusser, world champion of the specialty, swept everything: victory and leadership, giving her Spanish team, Movistar, the best gift: wearing a yellow jersey in the Tour four years later.
Wearing the rainbow jersey, Reusser marked distances from the beginning. At the first intermediate point she already had a lead of 20 seconds, on her way to overtaking the Dutch Lieke Nooijen (Visma) from the provisional first place. She achieved it, but not without suspense. From the ‘television’ seat that houses the leader, Nooijen was observing Reusser’s pace, and until the final stretch it was not clear that the Swiss woman had won the stage by a truly slim margin, just 4 seconds.
After Reusser and Nooijen, second, third place on the podium went to the also Dutch Demi Vollering (FDJ), third at 17 seconds behind. The heroine of the previous day, the Norwegian Sigrid Haugset, sank: just 24 hours after her escape of almost 90 kilometers to take the lead with two minutes to spare, in the effort against the clock she lost three minutes and said goodbye to the yellow jersey at the first opportunity.
It was a disastrous day for the winner of the last Tour de France. The French Pauline Ferrand-Prevot (Visma), a featherweight who based her victory last year in the high mountains, had a really bad time in the time trial and ended up losing 2’13”, a difference that will force her to go on the attack from now on.
Reusser thus arrives at the halfway point of the Tour wearing the yellow jersey for the first time and 14 seconds ahead of Demi Vollering and 54 seconds ahead of the Frenchwoman Cédrine Kerbaol.
Paula Blasi, on the rise
It was not an easy stage for Paula Blasi, a debutant in the Tour and with a performance in qualifying yet to be defined. But what was seen on the way to Dijon should greatly encourage the Catalan cyclist, this year’s champion of the Vuelta a España and the Volta a Catalunya. Blasi finished eleventh, 1’04” behind Reusser and just one second behind the woman she should theoretically help in this race, her teammate Elisa Longo, who starts with the ranks of leader in the UAE. In the general classification, Blasi rises to seventh place, with Longo fifth.
On Wednesday, the fifth stage will take place, a 140-kilometer route between Mâcon and Belleville-en-Beaujolais, with a mid-mountain route with a cumulative gradient of more than 2,800 meters.
