Lisa Brennauer goes for glory from the breakaway. Lisa holds the bunch off with her fellow breakaway companion to claim her first road win in WNT Rotor colours. The 74.6km stage included 2 intermediate sprints which Lisa went out to win, after winning the first sprint a gap opened and from just over 34km Lisa and Anouska Koster worked well together holding off the chasing peloton.
The gap went out to 30 seconds quickly increasing to a maximum advantage of 1 minute 5 seconds. The pair worked well together while away with only a little cat and mouse towards the last couple of kilometres. But Lisa had the legs to ride from the front for the final two kilometres and still have the strength to win comfortably when she opened up her sprint.
Speaking to Lisa after the race she had this to say;
“I was disappointed after the morning’s time trial [where she finished 7th] as I thought I was going quite well. In the afternoon I wanted to try and take the sprints jersey which I’ve been going for the last couple of days. Going into the first sprint, Kirsten got me into a great position, after I’d won it I looked round and we’d opened up a gap and Kirsten came over the radio to say ‘GO, GO GO’ so I thought it would be a good time to keep going. I didn’t want to gamble too much in the run in, so I was quite confident after winning the 2 sprints before the final. I made sure I got in to the final corner first and it was a crosswind on the final straight and kept as far to the left as possible and just rode really hard before opening my sprint fully and it was great to look round and see a big gap.”
“It gives me a lot of confidence for the rest of the season. It shows we have some differently cards to play and the help from the whole team and from Kirsten setting me up for the first intermediate sprint. It’s special and super nice”
Two stage wins in two days for WNT-Rotor Pro Cycling, it has been a really exciting start to the season and with many more race days remaining we are hoping for more success.
Lisa leads the intermediate sprints jersey with 13 points, 1 point ahead of breakaway companion Koster.
Kirsten Wild leads the points jersey with 66 points, 14 points ahead of Klein.
Kirsten currently sits in 3rd place overall in the general classification 41″ in arrears.
