26.06.2024 World-Tour, News, Race news

TIFFANY SPRINTS TO FOURTH IN GERA

Tiffany Cromwell sprinted to fourth place in yesterday’s second Lotto Thüringen Ladies Tour stage in Gera, Germany. The CANYON//SRAM Racing rider was fiercely determined against the peloton sprinters in a technical bunch sprint finish. After the final corner, Tiffany continued a powerful sprint in the closing metres to take an impressive fourth place.

CANYON//SRAM Racing tried several attacks at various points of the 118km stage, including a blistering attack by Kasia Niewiadoma in the closing kilometres. The Polish rider’s move created a six-rider group that was caught with less than two kilometres remaining on the stage. Tiffany kept her cool in the final kilometres, maintaining her position in a chaotic finale to take the fourth place. She moves into ninth place in the general classification, +2:48 minutes behind leader Margot Vanpachtenbeke. Kasia moves into third place in the queen of the mountain classification.

RIDER REACTIONS

Tiffany Cromwell: “Today was about making the race hard and taking opportunities where possible. But we had to be smart with how we used our strength. We had Alex, Justyna, Awen, and Nastya as backup support to try to make a breakaway between kilometre 20 and the Hankaberg. They tried but couldn’t get a decent split. Kasia split the bunch on the Hankaberg with her attack. But again, despite all the efforts of attacks and making splits, it was always coming back together, at least as a reduced bunch. Nastya and I tried to support Kasia where we could and continued to try to make the race hard with attacks. Then, we tried again one last time to set Kasia up on the day’s final climb. It needed to be longer and steeper to make a big difference. Kasia did get a good group of five riders away, but Human Powered Health chased to bring it back. Then, the plan was that I would do the sprint.

Honestly, I didn’t know how my legs would be for the sprint as I didn’t have the best feeling in my legs today. Suddenly, something clicked once I knew I needed to prepare for the sprint. We caught Kasia with 1km to go, so I knew I had to try surf wheels. I was trying to follow Guarischi as we were teammates in the past, and her wheel could technically suit me. Then I found Brand, and she took me up perfectly into the second last corner. It was fun! We could take it hard, as the few at the front were good bike handlers. The three ahead took the last corner a little wide. I got a better exit, but I had too much ground to make up for a fight for the podium or the win. Considering I haven’t been doing any sprinting or even fighting for the win for a long time, it was fun to get back into that fighting mode and see what I could do. I wanted to finish off the hard work of the team. Every day, the confidence comes back step by step.”