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Daniek Hengeveld (Ceratizit-WNT) soloed to win stage 1 of the Santos Women Tour Down Under in Aldinga Beach and claimed the race’s first ochre leader’s jersey.
Hengeveld attacked solo inside of 50 kilometres to go and upstaged the sprinters team to secure her first WorldTour victory, crossing the line 36 seconds ahead of the peloton.
A few kilometres after her solo flyer, a counter-attack fizzled quickly as Hengeveld increased her lead kilometre after kilometre as the peloton seemed disinterested in chasing. The 22-year-old Dutch rider kept her head down, pushing the gap to two minutes inside of 30 kilometres to go.
Alarms starting to ring in the peloton and Canyon-SRAM sent Chloé Dygert and Tiffany Cromwell to the front to chase, but without any concerted help from other teams, the peloton was too late to catch the solo rider.
Ally Wollaston (FDJ-SUEZ) took the chaotic field sprint for second place and Kathrin Schweinberger (Human Powered Health) was third.
Hengeveld admitted that her attack was in response to suffering on the lone categorized climb of the day.
“I was actually not even thinking, I was just it’s a new team and we wanted to be aggressive and I was actually struggling on the climb and I was like well, I better just go now because everybody is struggling. So that was my motivation to just go and see how far I go,” Hengeveld said.
“It was still far, and I was alone and I was like, oh, I will see how far I come.”
With the addition of time bonus seconds, Hengeveld tops the general classification with 43 seconds on Wollaston. Schweinberger is a further two seconds back.
Stage 2 should deliver the most decisive of the three days of racing as the peloton tackles 115km from Unley to the top of Willunga Hill.
How it unfolded
82 riders made up the peloton for the first Women’s WorldTour race of the year as Marit Raaijmakers (Human Powered Health) and Anouska Koster of UNO-X Mobility were non-starters.
The bunch remained together through the first 18km until Alyssa Polites (ARA Australian National Team) launched a move and, not drawing out any companions, she forged on alone. The 2021 triple junior national champion who raced with Jayco-AlUla in 2023 looked to have something to prove with her attack, and she gained a maximum of 2:30 before the peloton got to work to control the gap.
A crash from Felicity Wilson-Haffenden (Lidl-Trek) briefly interrupted the chasing peloton as half a dozen riders came down with her, but the pace soon picked up and Polites’ gap began to fall.
Polites led through the first intermediate sprint and, more importantly, stayed clear for the sole classified climb on Heatherdale Hill with 54km to go to secure the lead in the mountains classification.
Shortly after the summit, the peloton breezed past with counter-attacks flying.
“I had the finish line right on the QOM,” Polites said. “They just really egged me on in the car. And I made it across.”
Daniek Hengeveld (Ceratizit-WNT) was the next attacker to go clear solo into the crosswind. With 45.5km to go, a counter-attack of four riders from the peloton went after the Dutch woman, including Ella Wyllie (Liv AlUla Jayco) and Greta Marturano (UAE Team ADQ).
Only Marturano continued in pursuit of the solo leader as the peloton was happy to save their legs for the final 45km. Hengeveld having a lead of only 28 seconds on the bunch contributed to the lack of motivation to chase.
Hengeveld stayed clear for the second intermediate sprint with 30.1km to go, having carved out a gap of well over one minute while Marturano was absorbed by the peloton. Karlijn Swinkels (UAE Team ADQ) mopped up the points for second place in the sprint, adding to her tally after doing the same in the first intermediate sprint.
On the uncategorised climb inside the final 30km, Hengeveld added to her advantage, approaching the summit of the steepest pitch with two minutes in hand and only 27.5km to go. However, the 22-year-old had five more kilometres of gradual climbing and a long descent into Aldinga Beach ahead.
Despite teams like Canyon-SRAM with Chloé Dygert and Tiffany Cromwell, Hengeveld’s gap was nearly three minutes as she neared the final 20km of the stage. Once the climbs were over, FDJ-SUEZ, AG Insurance-Soudal and EF-Education-Oatly sent riders to help nullify Hengeveld’s 2:30 lead, but it didn’t seem to be coming down fast enough.
Hengeveld still had almost 2 minutes on the field with only 8.5 kilometres and her gap was just too much for the field. A furtive chase in the closing kilometres failed to bring the Dutch rider back, and she finished 42 seconds ahead of the peloton led home by Ally Wollaston (FDJ-SUEZ).
Results
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