The final day of the first Tour de Romandie saw it come down to the expected sprint. The Pole Marta Lach took her 2nd victory of the 2022 season and her first-ever Women’s WorldTour win, a running theme this weekend. Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio had no trouble keeping her GC lead on the run-in to Geneva this Sunday. A longish stage of 147.6km, there were some lumps in the parcours but nothing quite as tough as Stage 1’s small group sprint. Once they’d crested the Trelex climb, it was a flat 30 or so kilometres to the finish line.
The break of the day saw Elise Uijen and Quinty Ton get a gap initially but they were pulled back in before Ton gave it another go with Ella Harris. Their lead maxed out at 6 minutes before dropping fast towards the end of the stage. For Harris, it’s her last race at Canyon SRAM after winning the Zwift Academy back in 2018. She will join Le Col-Wahoo from 2023.
FDJ-Suez-Futuroscope did the bulk of the chasing, with BikeExchange-Jayco and Movistar helping out too. By the final climb, the gap was down to 2 minutes and it took until the final 2km for the gap to be closed completely. Annemiek van Vleuten doing a huge turn to close things up. With everyone now together, a sprint was on the cards and Ceratizit WNT’s Marta Lach took the victory ahead of Tamara Dronova and Stage 1’s winner Arlenis Sierra in 3rd place.
Photo Credit: Sprint Cycling Agency
Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio stayed out of trouble and finished in the front group. That secured the GC victory for the South African who followed up her first WWT stage win yesterday with a first WWT GC victory. The win caps off a season which was destined to be her last before retiring until confirming that she would still be in the peloton next year at AG Insurance-NXTG.
