She stood up with difficulty, clearly in pain, holding her back and with a large abrasion on her left hip. She got back on her bike and eventually rode at top speed again, but by that time she was 1:37 behind the peloton. She rode on alone, with no one from her team coming back to help her make up the gap, until Mischa Bredewold appeared and rode at the front, but only briefly. Vollering then raced the last 5km on her own, effectively riding a time trial to limit her losses.
She crossed the finish line weeping from frustration and, more ominously, touching her left knee. She finished 50th, 1:47 behind the stage winner, teammate Blanka Vas, and Niewiadoma and now sits ninth in the yellow jersey race, 1:19 behind the Polish rider, who may be the only woman in the peloton to be able to climb with her in the high mountains.
Commenting on her rival’s misfortune, Niewiadoma said, “The Tour started very hectic and dangerous from day one, so I wasn’t expecting anything chill today. In some way, crashes are a part of racing, an unfortunate part of racing because we lost Elise Chabbey, a very strong teammate.” Chabbey crashed in the stage 3 ITT and dropped out of the race.
“So I think that everyone has suffered something so far,” the new yellow jersey holder went on to say, “and that maybe today luck smiled towards us, towards my team, because we were able to stay in the front in the crucial moment and that allowed us to stay out of the troubles.”
The stage win, on the152.5km course from Bastogne to Amnéville, will be of little consolation for SD Worx-Protime since the team’s declared priority is to win the yellow jersey. Which raises the question of why Vollering had almost no help from her teammates as she raced to save her GC chances.
Bredewold told Eurosport that communications right after the crash were garbled and it took her a while to understand that her team leader had hit the deck. But it’s difficult to believe that in the most important race of the year, a team as professional and organized as SD Worx took no extraordinary measures to rescue its team leader.
Vas also said she hadn’t known about the crash. “My radio wasn’t working so I didn’t know what had happened,” she said. “I just saw that nobody from the team was there anymore. I didn’t know there was a crash. I have mixed feelings because we lost yellow, the crash happened, and I was the only one in front. But this is my biggest victory.”
SD Worx sports director Danny Stam defended the decision to leave Vollering on her own, saying: “I don’t think it would have made a difference to make the whole group wait. In the last four or five kilometres if Blanka or Demi went full gas, they would be alone anyway, so we let Demi ride her way as much as possible and got the best out of it.”
Several questions remain however: Did Vollering’s departure from the team at the end of the year and the difficult contract negotiations with her influence that decision? And why were team staff celebrating Vas’ victory at the finish line while the battered and bruised Vollering was still out on the road, trying to save her race?
This is the Dutch rider’s second setback in a row following her stunning victory in the stage 3 ITT. On Wednesday, she was deprived of the win on the lumpy stage 4 when the new darling of the peloton, the 22-year-old MTB cross-country European champion Puck Pieterse (Fenix-Deceuninck), outsprinted her by a whisker to take her first ever road race win.
Pieterse was also caught up in Thursday’s crash but managed to get on her bike quickly and lost only 28 seconds to Niewiadoma while holding on to her Queen of the Mountains polka-dot jersey and her white jersey for the best young rider in the race. She now sits third in the GC standings, 22 seconds behind the race leader. Kristen Faulkner (EF-Oatly-Cannondale), who finished fourth in the stage, is in second, at 19 seconds.
Vollering’s injuries don’t appear to be serious, but she will certainly be feeling the pain on Friday’s mountainous stage 6. Following a crash of the kind she suffered, there is a rush of adrenaline that in effect numbs the body. By the next day that adrenaline rush will be gone, leaving behind a very painful reminder of the crash.
In addition, she expended a lot of energy in her desperate solo ride to the finish line, energy she might need to stay in the race for yellow. Friday’s stage 6 includes five categorized climbs, including the tough category 2 La Roche du Pretre (7km @ 4.6%), which comes about 25km from the finish line.
La Roche du Pretre means ‘the Priest’s rock’. If Vollering wants to have a prayer of winning this Tour, she will need the help of all her teammates to counter Niewiadoma’s attacks – and those any other rider with GC ambitions who wants to take advantage of the favorite’s misfortune – which will surely come thick and fast.
GC Standings After Stage 6
- Kasia Niewiadoma, Canyon-SRAM 11:27:29
2. Kristen Faulkner, EF-Oatly-Cannondale +19 secs.
3. Puck Pieters, Fenix-Deceuninck +22
4. Cedrine Kerbaol, Cereatizit-WNT +47″
5. Juliette Labous, DSM-Firmenich-PostNL +56″
6. Thalita De Jong, Lotto-DSTNY +1’04”
7. Shirin van Anrooij, Lidl-Trek +1’07”
8. Pauliena Rooijakkers, Fenix-Deceuninck +1’08”
9. Demi Vollering, SD Worx-Protime +1’19”
10. Liane Lippert, Movistar +1’20”
Stage 5 Top 10
- Blanka Vas, SD Worx-Protime 3:46:51
2. Kasia Niewiadoma, Canyon-SRAM same time
3. Liane Lippert, Movistar s.t.
4. Kristen Faulkner, EF-Oatly-Cannondale s.t.
5. Emma Norsgaard, Movistar +8 secs.
6. Lucinda Brand, Lidl-Trek +11
7. Cedrine Kerbaol, Ceratizit-WNT s.t.
8. Lorena Wiebes, SD Worx-Protime +28
9. Marianne Vos, Visma–Lease a Bike s.t.
10. Evita Muzic, FDJ-Suez s.t.
