Stage 3, Schleiz, 23rd July 2009, 125.2km

In trying conditions Vicki Whitelaw finished 4th on Stage 3 of the International Thüringen-Rundfahrt yesterday and moved up to 8th overall. A 125km loop near the town of Schleiz, Germany, the third stage was run in wet, muddy conditions. The rolling climbs and rough descents splintered the peloton into a number small groups over the course of the race. A group of 15 riders broke away on one of the climbs with Whitelaw included in the selection.

Two riders were able to escape the group and ride solo to the finish. Whitelaw found herself sprinting for third place. There was a final corner 300m from the finish which the rain made treacherous. After the finish Whitelaw said she

“descended well and kept my focus on the right hand corner, careful to not over analyse it but to take it wide and smoothly. I survived it and then was faced with an uphill sprint, trying to claw my way back to Eva. I was gaining on her, but ran out of road and she crossed in third with me finishing 4th.”

Today’s stage (23rd July) consists of a 23 kilometre individual time trial.

Results:
1 Villumsend Serup (Team Columbia HTC)
2 Duster Sarah (Cervelo Test Team)
3 Lechner Eva (Gauss RDZ Ormu-Calnago
4 Whitelaw Vicki (Vision 1)
34 Verhoeven Aurore (Vision 1)
37 Cooke Nicole (Vision 1)
43 King Dani (Vision 1)

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 23rd, 2009 at 1:36 pm and is filed under Nicole Cooke Vision 1. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.