La Vuelta Femenina 2023 – Stage 1 [FULL STAGE – Team Time Trial] (ladies)

May 1, 2023

La Vuelta Femenina 2023 WE – Stage 1 TTT – Torrevieja – Torrevieja : 14,5 km

Since its inaugural edition in 2015, this Spanish stage race has gone through many different iterations. It started out as a one-day race before transitioning into a two, three, four and five-day stage race. This year’s race has been bumped up to seven days, moved from September to May and given a brand-new name – La Vuelta Femenina by Carrefour.es. La Vuelta Femenina, or as it used to be known: Ceratizit Challenge by La Vuelta, was formerly a one-day race held in tandem with the final stage of the men’s Vuelta and on the same, city-centre circuit around Madrid. Originally the race was a playground for the sprinters, but following its transition into a stage race and its inclusion of an individual time trial and several hilly stages, it quickly became the preserve of the GC specialists.

Jumbo-Visma won the team time trial that opened the 2023 La Vuelta Femenina by Carrefour.es. Over 14.5 kilometres through Torrevieja, the Dutch team set a time of 18:03 that none of the eight teams who started after them could beat.

Canyon-SRAM came closest and finished a second slower, Trek-Segafredo clocked the third-best time with 18:12 minutes. Having crossed the line first for her team, Anna Henderson takes the first red leader’s jersey of the Vuelta Femenina.

“We are over the moon, it’s our first win of the women’s team all year, and to win together is just awesome. We’re super happy and proud of the performance that we did,” Henderson said.

“We did a really good course recon and made a good plan as a team with our race coaches. We just left it all out there and really believed in each other. It’s so nice to win together,” the new race leader continued.

Having started as the 15th of 23 teams, Henderson and her teammates had to wait in the hot seat for some time before they could be certain of victory. “It was the most nervous I was for the whole race, to be honest,” she admitted.

“I was not nervous in the race because I knew we did a good performance as a team, but I was pretty nervous up there.”

HOW IT UNFOLDED
The Sopela Women’s Team was first off the ramp in the Torrevieja, one of eight Spanish Continental teams participating in their national tour.

Their time of 20:16 minutes put them in 20th place in the end, and the fight between the Spanish Continental teams was won by Massi-Tactic, who finished 14th in 19:29 minutes.

Israel-Premier Tech Roland, the first Women’s WorldTeam to start, cut 26 seconds off that but were themselves beaten by the next team on the road, St Michel-Mavic-Auber 93.

Liv Racing TeqFind were the first to go below 19 minutes in 18:45 minutes, Jayco-AlUla then improved on that by another 11 seconds despite an early crash for Georgie Howe.

Team Jumbo-Visma planned and executed their effort well, finishing with four of their seven riders together. Anna Henderson, Amber Kraak, Riejanne Markus, and Marianne Vos bettered the Australian team’s benchmark by more than 30 seconds to take the lead and set a high benchmark for their WorldTour rivals to beat.

Canyon-SRAM was three seconds behind the Dutch team at the intermediate timing point and made up time on the second half of the course but fell just short of the best time, finishing 0.53 seconds behind. Official results put them 1 second down on Jumbo-Visma.

Trek-Segafredo, Team SD Worx, and Movistar were all fast and disciplined in the 14.5km team time trial, but all lost seconds to Jumbo-Visma on the second part of the zig-zag shaped course, finishing in third, fifth, and fourth place, respectively.

Results :