Annemiek van Vleuten (Mitchelton-SCOTT) has shown pure dominance once again at the Boels Ladies Tour, winning the final individual time trial to make it a hat-trick of stage wins whilst securing the overall classification for a second year running.
In her final individual time trial event of the 2018 season as the world champion, Van Vleuten proved her class, blasting around the 18.6km course to stop the clock 22 seconds ahead of her nearest rival.
Mieke Kroger (Canyon-SRAM) set the standard early on around the pan-flat course, stopping the clock with a time of 24 minutes and 49 seconds to move into the hot seat. Van Vleuten started the day with an 18 second advantage over the second place rider on the GC, Lucinda Brand (Team Sunweb), who unfortunately suffered a fall during her effort and lost valuable seconds causing her to slip off the final race podium.
On her way to the stage victory, van Vleuten passed through the intermediate time check with the fastest time of 12 minutes and 14 seconds. Third placed rider overall on the GC, Ellen van Dijk (Team Sunweb), completed the distance and set the fastest time of 24 minutes 22 seconds, with only van Vleuten left to finish.
In the end, van Vleuten produced the fastest time to secure another convincing general classification victory and take the points classification in the Dutch race, a repeat of her 2017 success, where she held onto the race lead from the opening prologue until the final stage, whilst also winning the individual time trial stage along the way.
Teammate Amanda Spratt also had a strong time trial ride today to finish in fifth place on the stage, having been a valuable contributor to defending the leader’s jersey along with the rest of the Mitchelton-SCOTT team throughout the six-day tour.
“It is awesome to win, you are always a bit nervous for a time trial but I knew my shape was good and it is really nice to end this tour like this.
“For me it is also the last preparation for the world championships and I wanted to do everything the same going into the world championships, so it is really nice to win this tour and with a time trial.
“It was a little bit technical today, I saw an ambulance on one of the corners on the course, that scared me a bit so I took it very easy also with the general classification in mind.
“Lucinda Brand crashed on a corner so I took it a bit more easy on the corner but on the straight parts I was really full gas and had good legs just like the prologue and the first stage. I think on the straight parts I had a lot of power.”
Boels Ladies Tour stage 6 TT result:
1. Annemiek van Vleuten (Mitchelton-SCOTT) 24:00
2. Ellen van Dijk (Sunweb) +0:22
3. Anna van der Breggen (Boels-Dolmans) +0:32
Final General Classification:
1. Annemiek van Vleuten (Mitchelton-SCOTT) 14:34
2. Ellen van Dijk (Sunweb) +0:52
3. Anna van der Breggen (Boels-Dolmans) +1:05
