Sandrine Tas wins 2026 Eneco Tour Women stage 1 after last-kilometre catch in Ede

Sandrine Tas won stage 1 of the 2026 Eneco Tour Women in Ede, coming through a chaotic bunch sprint after Fariba Hashimi and Talia Appleton were caught inside the final kilometre.

The Lotto-Intermarché Ladies rider beat Charlotte Kool and Barbara Guarischi after the two pre-race sprint favourites became entangled in the fight for position close to the barriers. Nicole Steigenga finished fourth for AG Insurance-Soudal, with Scarlett Souren fifth for VolkerWessels Cycling Team.

Tas also moved into the overall race lead, taking the orange jersey from Lieke Nooijen less than 24 hours after finishing fourth in the opening prologue in The Hague.

How it unfolded

After the unusual evening prologue in The Hague, the first road stage offered a more familiar challenge. The 79.5km circuit around Ede was predominantly flat, with enough rolling roads to offer some encouragement to attackers but little to suggest that the main sprinters would be removed before the finish.

Kool appeared to have the clearest opportunity. She had finished second in the opening prologue, only losing the stage when Nooijen produced an exceptional late ride, and arrived in Ede just over eight seconds from the race lead.

Hashimi and Appleton were determined not to make the stage straightforward.

The Vini Fantini-BePink and Liv AlUla Jayco riders escaped during the opening part of the race and quickly established themselves as the day’s breakaway. Their advantage climbed beyond two minutes, while Fenix-Premier Tech assumed much of the responsibility for keeping the pair under control behind.

Hashimi and Appleton also collected the main bonus seconds available on the road, with Femke Markus taking the remaining second from the peloton. More importantly for the stage itself, the two leaders refused to fade at the rate the bunch expected.

Hashimi and Appleton make the peloton work

With 20km remaining, the gap was still around two minutes.

For what had looked beforehand like one of the most predictable sprint stages of the 2026 Eneco Tour route, that was beginning to become uncomfortable. Fenix-Premier Tech increased its work for Kool and the speed of the peloton rose sharply.

The advantage finally began falling quickly, but Hashimi and Appleton continued to work together and reached the final 10km with roughly 45 seconds remaining.

That was still enough to make the chase uncertain. On a short stage where the breakaway had already spent much of the day in front, another hesitation between the sprint teams could have left them fighting for third rather than victory.

There was no collapse from the two leaders either. They reached the final kilometre with only a handful of seconds in hand, still forcing the peloton to commit completely to the catch.

SD Worx closes the gap inside the final kilometre

SD Worx-Protime added its weight to the chase at exactly the point it was needed. An acceleration from the team finally brought Hashimi and Appleton back, ending a breakaway that had survived until the closing moments of the stage.

The late catch left little time for the usual sprint trains to reorganise. Rather than approaching the finish with one team controlling the road, the bunch arrived compact and with several riders trying to establish position at once.

Kool was still well placed and appeared ready to contest the victory she had spent much of the stage being set up for. Guarischi was alongside her as the sprint opened, with Tas also finding her way towards the front.

Guarischi then moved across towards the barriers as the riders accelerated. Kool was forced to check her sprint and briefly lost the momentum she had been building.

She recovered well enough to continue towards the line, but by then Tas had clear road.

Tas takes her chance as Kool is forced to recover

Tas accelerated through the opening created by the disruption and had enough speed to hold Kool off to the line.

Kool still recovered to finish second, a reflection of how much speed she carried into the final metres despite having to interrupt her effort. Guarischi crossed third, with Steigenga and Souren completing the top five.

Mia Griffin took sixth for Team Picnic PostNL, followed by Quinty Ton, Maud Rijnbeek and Femke Gerritse. Margaux Vigié completed the top 10 for Team Visma | Lease a Bike. All 10 received the same finishing time of 1:51:24.

The finish will inevitably leave Kool wondering what was possible with an uninterrupted sprint, but it should not reduce Tas’s part in the result. The Belgian had to be in position to exploit the opening and, once it appeared, she had the speed to convert it.

Tas turns strong prologue into stage win and race lead

Tas’s victory looks less surprising when placed alongside the ride she produced the previous evening.

The Belgian finished fourth in the 3.1km prologue, only 8.79 seconds behind Nooijen and less than six tenths of a second behind Kool. That short effort already suggested she had arrived at the Eneco Tour with both the speed and form to play a larger role than simply providing support in the flat stages.

Her 2026 road season had already been moving in that direction. Tas won two stages of the Bretagne Ladies Tour and finished second overall there, before taking second in the Belgian time trial championship and third in the national road race.

There is still something unusual about how quickly that road career has developed. Tas came to cycling after competing internationally as a speed skater, including at the Winter Olympics, and the engine built through years on the ice has increasingly translated into results on the bike.

Ede gives her a third road victory of the season and, through the stage winner’s bonus, the overall lead as well.

Tilburg time trial immediately puts the lead under pressure

The orange jersey may be Tas’s now, but there is almost no time to settle into it.

Stage 2 is the 13.6km individual time trial in Tilburg, more than four times the length of Tuesday’s prologue and potentially the most important day for the general classification. The flat course should bring Nooijen back towards the centre of the race after she safely finished in the bunch in Ede.

Tas has reason to believe she can limit the damage. Her fourth place in The Hague followed a season containing several strong performances against the clock, including second at the Belgian championships. The longer distance, however, should give Nooijen and the more established time trial specialists far more opportunity to create differences than the explosive prologue did.

That gives stage 1 an interesting place in the wider race. Tas has earned both a stage and the orange jersey, while Nooijen remains exceptionally well placed for the test that was always expected to shape the GC. Kool, meanwhile, has now finished second on consecutive days, first by eight seconds in the prologue and then after being forced to reset her sprint in Ede.

Before any of that could matter, though, Hashimi and Appleton came within the final kilometre of changing the stage entirely. Their resistance turned what looked like a routine sprint day into a chase that was only resolved in the final moments, and the hurried catch helped create the disorder from which Tas ultimately emerged with the win.

Eneco Tour Women 2026 stage 1 result