Elisa Balsamo took her first win of the 2025 season with a sprint finish in Valencia today. She was the fastest at the end of the 3rd stage of the 2025 Setmana Ciclista Valenciana beating Uno-X Mobility’s Norwegian rider Ingvild Gåskjenn. The Italian former World Champion has had a few near misses this season, with an unhappy time racing the UAE Tour Women saw a best finish of only 12th over 3 definitive sprint stages. So far this week she’s been 4th and 2nd, with positioning an issue despite being the on-paper major favourite. Finally today, everything was hooked up correctly and Balsamo was able to claim the first victory, of potentially many, this season. Demi Vollering retains the overall GC lead with no incidents.
Photo Credit: GettyThe stage’s action got going with Emily Watts, the Australian riding for St Michel-Preference Home-Auber93 went clear solo but never quite got her gap over the 1-minute mark. She would be joined later by Team Picnic PostNL’s Juliana Londono and the pair worked well together until the L’Oronet climb in the midpoint of the stage. Here the peloton sprung into life with several attacks. Nikola Noskova attacked out of the peloton and bridged across to Londono as Watts began to drop backwards. The high pace in the peloton saw them all caught before the summit however as a move featuring Mireia Benito, Amber Kraak and Maeva Squiban managed to go clear at the summit.
The trio worked well together and put some serious pressure onto the peloton behind. FDJ-Suez were happy to sit in and no other teams offered to help Lidl-Trek at the front. They used up Anna Henderson and Amanda Spratt to catch the breakaway, whose gap was never that much more than 25 seconds but still required some serious chasing. It wasn’t until a pull from Anna van der Breggen with around 2 kilometres to go that the gap finally disappeared and the trio were caught.
From there, it was a clear sprint on the cards. After missing out the previous 2 stages, Balsamo launched her sprint early to get into clear air and was able to manage the gap to 2nd placed rider Ingvild Gåskjenn. Once Balsamo launched, it never looked likely she would be overtaken today.
About her break earlier in the stage, Juliana Londono said: “I consider today a positive day. I woke up feeling a bit tired, and when coach Callum (Ferguson) told me to try to get in the break, I honestly thought I wouldn’t be able to do it. At the start, it was really tough, but on the second attempt that I finally managed to get a gap. While in the breakaway, I just focused on reaching the top of the climb. The main group caught me with just a kilometre to go to the top, but I managed to stay with them on the descent for the final. I’m happy that I gave it a try.”
2025 Setmana Ciclista Valenciana Stage 3 result
Results powered by FirstCycling.com
Main photo credit: Setmana Ciclista
