Vuelta Femenina stage 2: Alison Jackson wins sprint in crash-marred finale

Alison Jackson (EF Education-Cannondale) claimed a storming sprint victory in a messy finale to stage 2 of the Vuelta Femenina, as Blanka Vas (SD Worx-Protime) grabbed the red jersey as the new overall leader.

The peloton was disrupted by a pair of crashes inside the final few kilometres, the second occurring through a roundabout and cutting the bunch to pieces. What was left of the peloton managed to reform under the flamme rouge, whereupon Kristen Faulkner came through to lead out Jackson.

When she opened the sprint, Jackson stomped on the pedals and hung on for victory, celebrating wildly beyond the finish line.

Blanka Vas (SD Worx-Protime) shook her head in frustration as she settled for second place, but had the consolation prize of moving into red jersey courtesy of bonus seconds, both on the line and at an earlier intermediate sprint.

Karlijn Swinkels (UAE Team ADQ) clinched the final spot on the day’s podium.

“I had a bit of disappointing spring, but the team has been coming together more and more with every race and coming into the Vuelta I had a lot of fire,” Jackson said.

“I was going to do anything it took to get this win.”

The stage looked as if it would be defined by the sole climb of the Puerto de l’Oronet, where, some 40km from the finish, the peloton’s fastest sprinter Charlotte Kool (dsm-fimenich-PostNL) was jettisoned from the bunch and forced into a long chase. Her group looked on the cusp of regaining contact inside the final 5km, but the bunch was thrown into disarray by a pair of crashes, the second with 2.5km to go leaving Jackson as part of a five-rider group behind a lone leader, Jelena Eric (Movistar).

When the rest of the reformed but heavily reduced bunch came back with 1,000 metres to go, Faulkner moved up to the front and laid out the red carpet for Jackson, who made no mistake as she bobbed her head furiously all the way to the line. Vas and Swinkels began to gain as the line approached but Jackson had done more than enough and won by a bike length to add another notch to a palmarès that already includes Paris-Roubaix.

“I was just in the right positions at the right time. Crashes were happening and I kept being safe,” Jackson said.

“In the final, the group kind of caught the four of us that made it through the crashes first, then my teammate Kristen was there, she went at 500 [metres to go] full gas, she was so strong, I knew no one could come around, and I just had to choose my sprint when I wanted it to happen. It’s just unbelievable to come with the win.”

In the general classification, Vas made up for her disappointment in the sprint by pulling on the red jersey thanks to a 10-second haul of bonuses. She’d picked up four for second place at the intermediate sprint with 30km to go, which already put her into the virtual race lead, having trailed Gaia Realini and the rest of the Lidl-Trek team by fractions of a second following the opening team time trial.

Six more seconds at the finish mean she now leads the race by eight seconds, with Jackson’s 10 bonus seconds taking her to second overall, ahead of a cluster of Lidl-Trek and Visma riders at nine seconds.

How it played out

The 118.3km stage 2 took the riders north of Valencia, with a finish on the coast but a crucial third-category climb of the Puerto de l’Oronet, which topped out 38km from the finish in Moncofa.

After a frantic start that saw a few riders hit the deck, including the Tour of Flanders champion Elisa Longo Borghini (Lidl-Trek), the day’s breakaway started to form, though not without a bit of a fight.

At first, three riders went clear: Idoia Eraso (Laboral Kutxa-Fundación Euskadi), Angela Oro (Bepink-Bongioanni) and Marine Allione (Winspace). A couple more counter-attacks came and went, before another three managed to make the bridge across: Silvia Zanardi (Human Powered Health), Valerie Demey (Volkerwessels), Audrey de Keersmaeker (Lotto-Dstny). Two more riders - Lourdes Oyarbide (Laboral Kutxa-Fundación Euskadi), Andrea Casagranda (Bepink-Bongioanni) - tried to make the jump but were too late, and settled back into the bunch after 30km to leave a six-woman escape for much of the day.

At the half-way stage, the gap stood at 2:30, and the pace in the peloton started to rise on the approach to the Puerto de l’Oronet, which measured 5.9km at 4.3%. By the foot of the climb, the gap was down to half a minute, and despite Eraso’s best efforts to go solo, it was all over for the escapees a kilometre or so into the climb.

The pressure was being applied by Visma-Lease a Bike and as they swept past the breakaway, they forced a number of riders to drop off the back of the bunch, steadily thinning to the point where Kool, the peloton’s key sprinter, lost contact.

Swindles clipped off the front at the top of the climb to claim maximum mountains points and earn the spotted jersey, while the descent gave way to a lull in the bunch. That did not, however, allow Kool to return, with the Dutchwoman stranded in a 30-rider bunch some 90 seconds down.

Anneke Dijkstra (VolkerWessels) launched a solo attack that took her through the intermediate sprint inside the final 30km, where Vas hit out to claim the second set of bonus seconds ahead of Grace Brown (FDJ-SUEZ). The peloton soon reformed and, propelled by Visma, Jayco-AlUla and EF, rode hard to keep the Kool bunch at bay.

It was touch and go, with the gap reduced to less than a minute with 20km to go, then 30 seconds with 20km to go. They were in sight in the final 5km, but suddenly the race descended into chaos. The first crash came underneath the 3km to go banner that saw four riders, including Lidl-Trek’s Lizzie Deignan, go down, but the second a few hundred metres later was at higher speed, claiming many more victims, although none of the general classification favourites were affected.

Eric suddenly found herself with a gap and pressed on, while Jackson was part of a four-man group just behind. Those riders were swelled up by a 50-rider peloton under the flamme rouge, and while Fenix-Deceuninck were the first to take control, EF who took over through Faulkner with 500 metres to go, giving Jackson the perfect platform to take the team’s biggest win since they launched at the start of this year.