Superb team ride sees Juliette Labous 2nd on stage and move up on GC

After some brilliant teamwork to make the stage as hard as possible, Juliette Labous climbed to second in Alassio and as a result moves into the same place on the GC standings.

With a challenging stage behind them on Wednesday where Team dsm-firmenich made the race as hard as they could, they set out with exactly the same plan today in the hope of moving Labous up on GC and go for a stage result. Franziska Koch, Megan Jastrab and Eleonora Ciabocco set a good early tempo, holding the race together before the first main climb of the day where the pace stayed high and several riders were dropped. Over the top, Labous, Esmée Peperkamp, Francesca Barale and Becky Storrie were in the reduced peloton of around 40 riders, with the latter three continuing to set a strong tempo.

Despite some attacks, the race was all back together on the penultimate climb where Storrie and Barale led Labous into a good position at the bottom and from there the pace increased once more. A dangerous move from Garcia went but she was only able to ever gain around 25 seconds and by the time the group hit the steeper final few kilometres, she was caught. Powering over the top, Labous made it onto the plateau alongside Van Vleuten and Realini. With the Labous and Realini working well together, they managed to put more time into Ewers who had started the day in second place.

Van Vleuten, who had set tempo for the final few kilometres of previous climb, sat on to the back while Labous and Realini rotated turns. Not long after hitting the final climb with just over two kilometres remaining, Van Vleuten put in a stinging attack and would go on to take the stage win. Labous rode within herself and didn’t go into the red, jumping Realini in the final few hundred metres to take a brilliant second place and move up to the same standing on GC.

“It was a really nice day for us,” smiled Labous at the finish. “The girls positioned us well onto the first climb, where Becky and Esmée set a hard pace so that other people were getting tired; and I think that worked. Francesca was still there too and they did a good job to position me onto the final climbs. Annemiek went and I could follow alongside Realini, which was the first time for me here at this race, so I’m really happy about that. I fought as hard as I could and second place is amazing. I want to thank all of the girls and the staff as well, it’s just amazing the confidence that they had in me. I could really feel that in the race, and it helped me a lot.”

Team dsm-firmenich coach Kelvin Dekker added: “We started already yesterday with making things hard, as that suits Juliette, so today we wanted to make sure that the whole stage was really hard. We started already by positioning well for the first climb with Franziska and Megan, who are really good at that. Juliette doesn’t really have to worry about anything for the first 25 kilometres on the flat. Eleonora then did a good pull, before Becky paced almost the whole climb. Esmée and Francesca also did their work to make sure that the race was immediately hard over the top, which was necessary to drop Ewers in the end. We took our foot off the gas a bit and we still had Esmée, Francesca and Becky with Juliette. We positioned Juliette really well and supported her in the best possible way for the final climbs. From the moment Ewers was struggling to stay with her, then we went full and we know it was all-out to the line. I think Juliette had her best day of the Giro so far, which proves we had the right tactic the last few days to make it harder and harder. In the end she was almost able to follow Van Vleuten, and could drop Realini in the last 500 metres, and means she takes time on almost everyone. Moving into second on GC is really amazing. We have the rest day ahead of us before we will do everything to defend this in the last two stages. I think we can be extremely proud that we got everything out of the stage that we could, especially with such a great team effort, which was incredible.”