Excellent third place on her home roads for Swiss Marlen Reusser of the Alé BTC Ljubljana team, who today climbed onto the podium of the first stage of the first edition of the Tour de Suisse Women.
A race particularly felt by the Swiss athlete and she proved it with a great performance. The race was decided by a breakaway of six riders, in which Reusser was part of. Five riders remained in the breakaway and Canyon SRAM had the upper hand. Taking advantage of this situation Swiss champion Elise Chabbey escaped with just over 15 kilometres to go. Only Briton Lizzie Deignan (Trek-Segafredo) was able to keep up with her, but then had to give up in the final sprint for victory. In the final three kilometres Marlen Reusser broke away from the chasing group to take third place, 24 seconds behind the first two.
Tatiana Guderzo also performed well as she remained in the second chasing group, finished seventh overall and was second in the sprint.
“Overall the girls have raced well and we take a good placement – is the comment of the team manager Fortunato Lacquaniti -, with Marlen and Tatiana we were present in both the two main groups and in the final I told Marlen to start to try to take at least the third place and she has been good. Tomorrow we will have a flat stage and we will try to defend this third place in the general classification”.
Fourteenth and twenty-first place for Marta Bastianelli and Anna Trevisi, more distant the young Alessia Patuelli.
The Italian team was also engaged today in Belgium, at Dwars door het Hageland, where they did not arrive significant placings: only Eugenia Bujak (19th) entered in the top 20.