August 22/11 12:47 pm - Trophee d'Or Feminine: Stage 3

Posted by Editoress on 08/22/11
 

The HTC-Highroad women kept their momentum from the stage one victory on Saturday to win the team time trial on Sunday morning, before putting Charlotte Becker in the leader's jersey with a stage three victory in the afternoon. The team took an aggressive approach to the third stage after four girls emerge as GC contenders from the TTT.

"The time trial was a very technical city circuit," said sport director, Ronny Lauke, "We had a good recon yesterday morning and came up with a good strategy for the race."

"We were pretty specific in our planning, we decided at the recon who would pull on each section and so forth. It worked quite well and at each check point we had two seconds ahead of the next best time."

HTC-Highroad finished thirteen seconds ahead of Nederland bloeit, and had four girls in contention for the GC going into stage three.

"We went after the third stage with a lot of attacks," said Lauke, "We wanted to put ourselves in front from the beginning and try to keep one or two riders in the break."

"Adrie [Visser] and another rider took off at about two and a half kilometers to go on the finish circuit. Eventually they were caught at about three hundred meters to go and this was when Charlotte [Becker] saw the opportunity to win."

Becker outsprinted the field for the stage win and the yellow jersey, making this the third win out of three for the Trophee d'or so far. Lauke stated that the team was in high spirit, but the next three days will be difficult riding, more so with defending the yellow jersey.
HTC-Highroad press release