Vos bosses the sprint as Paternoster takes La Roja
May 5 th 2025 - 17:36 [GMT + 2]
Marianne Vos won the second stage of La Vuelta Femenina 25 by Carrefour.es, decided by an uphill sprint in Sant Boi de Llobregat. The Dutch rider claimed her fifth victory in this event, on which she is the winningest rider thanks to her endurance and her excellent turn of speed, reinforced today by an excellent leadout from her Visma | Lease a Bike teammates. Second at the finish line came Letizia Paternoster (Liv-AlUla-Jayco), scoring six bonus seconds that enable her to become the new overall leader and take La Roja off the shoulders of Lidl-Trek’s Ellen van Dijk, who got dropped in the last descent and failed to defend her first position in the GC. The race will go on with a flat, 132,4-kilometre stage from Barbastro to Huesca on which the wind might well play a role.
145 riders took the start in the 2nd stage of La Vuelta Femenina 25 by Carrefour.es, which covered 99 kilometres between Molins de Rei and Sant Boi de Llobregat, at 14:44. Nearly off-the-bat, the bunch started climbing the insidious Alt de la Creu de l’Aragall (cat 2, km 11,9). No breakaway attempt managed to go clear, yet Laboral Kutxa-Fundación Euskadi’s Ane Santesteban made a move near the summit of the climb to ride across it in first position and become the first leader of the Mountains classification. It was after 22 kilometres, the descent already over, that Elena Cecchini (SD Worx-Protime) went clear on her own. The Italian rider built an advantage of 50”, clocked at kilometre 28. She gave up shortly after as no one wanted to join her at the front, and was back in the bunch by kilometre 35. This attack enabled her to claim the Combativity award of the day.
Heavy rain and no breakaway
Heavy rain started falling over the pack as it rode together towards the Intermediate Sprint (IS, km 58,5), won by Visma | Lease a Bike’s Marianne Vos. Once across it, Lea Lin Teutenberg (Lotto Ladies) launched a short-lived attack. From then on, the riders sat tight and occasionally fought for position, afraid of falling on the wet roads as happened to SD Worx’s Anna van der Breggen or Movistar Team’s Olivia Baril.
Perfect leadout by Visma | Lease a Bike
There were no big crashes in the long descent to Gavà (km 90,2) - yet there was some harm, as the peloton was quite stretched out and some groups were dropped, included one with overall leader Ellen van Dijk (Lidl-Trek) who was thus forced to bid farewell to La Roja. Visma | Lease a Bike put an excellent leadout in the final kilometres with Pauline Ferrand-Prévot and Imogen Wolff to set up Marianne Vos’ domination in the sprint to the line, with Letizia Paternoster (Liv-AlUla-Jayco) taking the second position and six bonus seconds that put get at the top of the general classification.
