In her World Tour debut, Antonia Niedermaier stormed to victory on stage five of the Giro d’Italia Donne today. With a brave attack, Antonia shot clear from an elite group of climbers with 25km remaining and rode solo to take her first World Tour win. The 20-year-old CANYON//SRAM Racing rider moves into second in the general classification and takes the lead in the youth classification.

HOW IT HAPPENED

With 2500m of elevation on the queen stage, the day’s main climb, Pian del Lupo, came within the first 15km of racing. Brought into position by her teammates on the hors category climb, Antonia was with the first riders until around 3km to the summit. After the long descent, four leaders, Annemiek van Vleuten, Elisa Longo Borghini, Gaia Realini and Niamh Fisher-Black led the race. Behind, Antonia was in a group of five riders who chased and caught the leaders with around 35km remaining.

The group would oscillate for the next 10km between riding slowly and attacking each other. Antonia countered a move from Silvia Persico and quickly built a 15-second lead. With a climb and descent, the gap slowly increased to around 1:15 minutes, with just one climb remaining. Van Vleuten and Longo Borghini had the CANYON//SRAM Racing rider in their sights with just 14 seconds separating them with 9km to the finish. From a ski-mountaineering background, Antonia had no trouble on the descents and was able to continue her strong ride to hold off Van Vlueten to win by 9 seconds.

RIDER REACTIONS

Antonia Niedermaier: “I’m very happy with this win. I can’t really believe it! The pace on the first climb was really hard, and I dropped from the leaders. Luckily, we had a good group and worked to catch the leaders. I knew if I wanted to try something, I just needed to go for it. I was glad to be able to choose my own lines on the descents, and I kept pushing on the climbs. I felt really strong until the final 1.5km, which hurt like hell. I had the Sport Directors in the car pushing me and giving me a lot of motivation. I was so done in the end I didn’t hear anything from the crowd in the final few hundred metres; I just wanted to cross the line.”

“I wasn’t expecting this, and now to have the Best Young Rider jersey is really nice. Big thanks to our staff for all their hard work!”

The Giro d’Italia Donne can be followed on Twitter with #GiroDonne23 and #UCIWWT. A broadcast on RAI Sport, GCN and Eurosport is expected daily at 13:00.

HOW TO WATCH

Stage 6 | Canelli | 5 July | 104km | Start 12:00CEST | Broadcast 13:00CEST

Stage 7 | Albenga – Alassio | 6 July | 109km | Start 11:40CEST | Broadcast 13:00CEST

Stage 8 | Nuoro – Sassari | 8 July | 125km | Start 11:35CEST | Broadcast 13:00CEST

Stage 9 | Sassari – Olbia | 9 July | 126km | Start 11:25CEST | Broadcast 13:00CEST

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