admin Marlen Reusser, a swiss rider, went solo to gain victory on a hill laden fourth stage of the Tour de France Femmes with the great Marianne Vos, a dutch rider. This helped her retain the yellow jersey on Wednesday. She pointed to the same jersey and raised her arms high above as she crossed the line more than a minute ahead of anyone else.
Marlen Reusser, who is an SD Worx rider, powered home with more than a minute ahead of her closest chasers. She attacked when she had only 20 KM remaining on the ride totalling 127 KM from Troyes to Bar Sur Aube. Vos was able to safely negotiate over several gravel-filled climbs, as she finished in tandem with the other GC contenders.
The four sectors of rough, white gravel strewn roads, as expected, duly caused chaos. In this chaos, Reusser took advantage of a moment of calm to launch a canny attack on the tarmac sector that lay in between the penultimate and final sectors.
Silvia Persico (Valcar travel and services), the Italian rider, and Katarzyna Niewiadoma (Polish SRAM), the Polish rider, were exactly 16 seconds behind her with half the race remaining.
Reusser explained how this kind of stage suited her greatly. “We did it,” she said. “The team had a plan to make it a hard race. The goal was to not let it calm down. The one could go, and luckily it was me.”
Reusser also praised her GC leaders. “We always keep them in front, but then this team always has an aggressive and open race strategy. Everyone is allowed to do something. I was really the lucky one who could go today, so I’m really thankful.”
The Spanish Champion, Mavi García (UAE Team ADQ), on the other hand had the most unfortunate incident. She met with an accident and crashed as she ran into her own team car. And just like that, her dreams of overall victory simply disappeared.
Most of the big names – excluding García – were back in the yellow jersey group of 20 riders by that point and they neutralized each other at the finish, but Reusser had already taken flight.
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