Nienke Veenhoven claimed her second stage win of the Baloise Ladies Tour on stage 3b, out-sprinting the rest of the field in the Grote Markt in Maaseik to seal a dominant afternoon for Visma-Lease a Bike.
Stage 3b sent the peloton back out for a second test on the same day as the morning’s time trial, this time over a flat, four-lap 104.8km circuit around Maaseik, the first time the race has visited this part of Limburg. Billed beforehand as close to pancake flat, the course always looked destined for a bunch sprint, and little in the afternoon’s racing changed that picture. The peloton controlled the race from the front for almost the entire distance, with Visma-Lease a Bike prominent in that effort well before the sprint trains ever formed.
How the stage unfolded
There was still incident along the way. Citymesh’s Femke Van Goethem went down in a crash mid-stage and did not get back up in time to rejoin. A trio did escape late on, forcing a response on a short rise outside town, but the gap was never allowed to grow beyond half a minute, and the sprinters’ teams reeled the move in comfortably with around 15km still to race. From there, the story was containment rather than drama: the advantage was cut in half with 16km to go and extinguished not long after, leaving a straightforward run-in to Maaseik.
Visma-Lease a Bike made the most of the control they had established. Veenhoven was kept close to the front through the closing kilometres and delivered into the finishing straight in the ideal position, needing only to find her sprint at the right moment. She did exactly that, powering clear with nobody able to respond. “We were always well positioned at the key points,” she said afterwards of her team’s work through the finale. It is Veenhoven’s third win of the season and her second of this race, having also taken the opening stage into Knokke-Heist on Thursday.
AG Insurance-Soudal’s Gladys Verhulst-Wild edged out Canyon SRAM’s Maike van der Duin for second in a tight photo finish, with Lotte Kopecky fifth. Third was a landmark result for van der Duin, marking her return to a race podium after more than two years without one.
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Photo Credit: A.S.O./Thomas Maheux
The overall picture
Zoe Bäckstedt was never troubled. The overall leader followed the sprint home safely, more than content to protect the jersey she had reclaimed that morning with victory in the 8.4km time trial, a result that also pushed Viktória Chladoňová’s earlier best time in that same test out of the headlines. Bäckstedt’s overall lead now stands at 23 seconds over Felicity Wilson-Haffenden, with Charlotte Kool, Friday’s stage 2 winner, third overall at 30 seconds.
With Bäckstedt already the 2025 champion of this race and now sitting on a healthy cushion heading into the closing stage, the response from Wilson-Haffenden and Kool over the remaining kilometres to Mechelen looks like the last real chance to unsettle her.
Baloise Ladies Tour 2026 stage 3b result
Results powered by FirstCycling.com
Main photo credit: Getty
