Another fun stage to watch at the Tour de Suisse Women saw Niamh Fisher-Black take her first WWT victory and first non-national or world championships victory of her young career. In a head-to-head sprint against Kasia Niewiadoma, who’d done almost all of the work in the second half of the stage, the Kiwi was able to comfortably come past for the win. Behind her, Marlen Reusser finished on her own in 3rd place, enough to secure the GC win by over a minute from teammate Demi Vollering.
The final stage started and finished in Ebnat-Kappel, on the same finish as yesterday’s Stage 3 finish. There was climbing again on the final stage, with the Wintersbergstrasse the key Cat 1 climb in the middle of the stage before 3 ascents of the Hemberg to finish off the stage.
An early break saw a strong group of 10 go clear and get a good advantage of over 3 minutes. It included Marta Bastianelli, Dani de Francesco, Anastasiya Kolesava, Tiffany Cromwell, Julie van de Velde, Valerie Demey, Tiril Jorgenson, Eglantine Rayer, Eyeru Tesfoam Gebru and Rosita Reijnhout. The tensome began the tough Wintersbergstrasse climb and that split up the bunch with the likes of Bastianelli and Jorgenson dropping back to the main peloton. Julie van de Velde and Eglantine Rayer in particular still looked strong though, with the Belgian on a hunt for the QoM jersey too.
Behind them, Brodie Chapman launched an attack for Trek Segafredo which she couldn’t push home. Instead, it launched Kasia Niewiadoma who linked up with Tiffany Cromwell from the earlier break with Niamh Fisher-Black glued to her wheel. Cromwell did a massive turn to help push home the advantage and suddenly Niewiadoma and Fisher-Black were up with Van de Velde and Rayer 2 minutes ahead at the front of the race.
That suddenly put pressure on SD Worx to work behind with Niewiadoma now the virtual leader on the road. With no other support, Demi Vollering did a large chunk of work before Marlen Reusser launched to chase after her own race. The Swiss rider managed to get the gap down to one that suited her and whilst she couldn’t catch the now lead pair of Niewiadoma and Fisher-Black, she had done comfortably enough to win the Tour de Suisse Women GC.
Coming into the final kilometres, with Reusser only 30″ back, Kasia had to keep the pressure going on the front and couldn’t play any cat and mouse with Fisher-Black. That meant she just tried to keep the pace high and could only lead out Fisher-Black for a simple sprint victory. Niewiadoma’s winless streak now stretches back 1469 days back to the 2019 Women’s Tour.
2023 Tour de Susise Women Stage 4 result
Results powered by FirstCycling.com
