Stage 1 of the Tour El Salvador delivered exactly what a tight, technical city circuit tends to produce: a long day of positioning, plenty of interruptions, and then a sprint that hinged on the final few corners and the last 150 metres.
The 69.1km opener in San Salvador was raced as repeated laps of the Flor Blanca urban loop, taking the peloton through wide boulevards and narrower streets that punished any lapse in concentration. With so many corners and frequent changes of direction, the rhythm was never smooth for long. Riders were constantly shuffling for shelter, fighting for wheels, and trying to stay out of trouble as the speed rose and fell across the laps.
From early on, Laboral Kutxa-Fundación Euskadi rode as a team that had come to the start with a clear plan. After winning the 2.7km prologue the previous day with Catalina Soto, they did not race like a squad, simply defending a good start. Instead, stage 1 looked like a continuation of that momentum: calm leadership, bodies around the front, and a willingness to spend energy to keep the race on their terms.
That control mattered because the day was not perfectly clean. Van ’t Geloof later referenced “bad luck with some crashes and punctures”, and in a city circuit that kind of disruption can shred a lead-out before it ever forms. The key, as she framed it, was that the team did not panic, even when the race threatened to become messy. They stayed organised, kept the pace manageable, and brought the stage back to a sprint scenario.
Photo Credit: Francisco AlemanAs the kilometres ticked down, the stage tightened into the familiar shape of a bunch finish. Teams started to appear in clearer blocks, trying to guide their sprinters through the final laps without burning too many matches too early. The laps encouraged late moves from riders looking to exploit hesitation, but the overriding sense was that the fastest finishers and the best-organised trains would decide it.
Inside the final lap, the battle shifted from raw power to timing and placement. Van ’t Geloof was positioned to launch when it mattered, and once the sprint opened, she had the speed to convert that work into the stage win. She described the closing moments bluntly: “The last 150 metres were the hardest.”
Behind her, Ainara Albert Bosch sprinted to second, and Anastasiya Samsonova took third, confirming that the finish was resolved by a conventional fast finish rather than a late solo. Van ’t Geloof’s sports director Peio Goikoetxea underlined how the victory was built, not improvised, pointing to the riders who delivered her to the front at the right moment: Yulia Biriukova and Idoia Eraso. His assessment was simple and telling: the team executed the finale, and van ’t Geloof “finished it off”.
In the broader picture of the race, the stage also reshaped the overall situation. With bonus seconds in play across the opening days, Albert Bosch’s consistency across the prologue and stage 1 was enough to put her into the overall lead after two days of racing, with van ’t Geloof close behind and Giorgia Vettorello next on the classification. Meanwhile, local riders and smaller teams fought their own battles inside a deep finishing group, with El Salvador’s María Rivera highlighted as the best-placed home rider on the day.
Tour El Salvador 2026 stage 1 Women result
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Main photo credit: MOPT
