Demi Vollering and Gaia Realini were the strongest climbers in the Tour de Suisse stage 1, attacking on Villars-Sur-Ollon early and doing their season best efforts.
The opening stage of Tour de Suisse Women started with the Villars-Sur-Ollon (7.3 km, 8.1%) climb, where the mountain time trial will take place tomorrow. The peloton opened with the first climb of the stage Col de la Croix with 4.84 ᵉW/Kg for 14:20 min.
After winning three WorldTour stage races in a row in Spain, Demi Vollering returned even stronger. As usual, she did not have the best team support from SD-Worx as she is leaving the Dutch super team after this season. European Champion Mischa Bredewold paced at the start, then FDJ and Vollering started setting her own pace with 5.3 km to go. Gaia Realini counter-attacked and worked together with the reigning Tour de France winner, with Realini even doing more work. Later Vollering dropped Realini with a strong attack and with 1.4 km to go caught Elissa Chabbey from the breakaway.
Vollering did the best performance of the season in women’s cycling, pushing 5.50 ᵉW/Kg for 26:36 min. Realini with her probably the strongest effort yet averaged 5.44 ᵉW/Kg, losing only 22 seconds to Vollering. Elisa Longo Borghini and Kim Cadzow were the next fastest riders from the peloton with 5.24 – 5.26 ᵉW/Kg and losing around a minute. Labous, Bunel, Žigart and Bradbury did 5.19 ᵉW/Kg for 27:53 min. Like in the men’s Tour de Suisse this week, the women are setting their best performances or close to that.