Franziska Koch: “The pressure is off our shoulders now”

May 6 ^th 2026 - 18:10 [GMT + 2]

Franziska Koch (FDJ United-Suez) remains in the lead of the Points classification of La Vuelta Femenina 26 by Carrefour.es after Stage 4, although she is not leading the overall standings anymore.

“It has been a really nice day. I really could feel the confidence of my teammates. I have definitely enjoyed the two days in the red jersey. Now I’ve lost it, but it's still nice to have the green jersey on my shoulders. It will probably also be a tight fight, as there are only a few points between Lotte and I, so the next few days should be exciting too. The pressure is off of us now, because we don't have anything to defend anymore. We can play a bit more and it will be interesting. Today, we contributed to the chase by keeping the gap under two minutes. Bringing the breakaway back wasn’t up to us but to those teams who wanted to win the stage, so we just did our part of the job. It was a really strong breakaway, but I was also quite confident that the speed in the run-in towards the finish would be so high in the peloton that we would get them back. After all, they had had a really long day out at the front.”