The Tour of Chongming Island stage 2 podium ceremony was a particular sight as Marta Lach and her Ceratizit-WNT teammates Mylène de Zoete and Kathrin Schweinberger occupied all three podium steps.
By sprinting to an unprecedented podium sweep, the blue-and-red-clad group made Girls’s WorldTour historical past.
“That is one thing unbelievable, and it feels wonderful to face on the rostrum with the teammates, and I’ll always remember this. It’s one thing that we by no means considered earlier than the race, and it got here out good for us,” Lach informed Cyclingnews.
“We did wonderful the entire race, Laura [Asencio] and Marta [Jaskulska] have been chasing all of the breakaways. For the ultimate, they and Sandra [Alonso] did an ideal lead-out for us till the final 400 metres. Sandra did a super-long lead-out, then Kathrin did a tremendous lengthy dash.”
With Schweinberger main them out, Lach was within the function of ‘sweeper’ on the wheel of stage 1 winner De Zoete, ensuring that no dash rival may come out of the yellow jersey’s slipstream.
Lach and De Zoete then handed their Austrian teammate on the left and proper to take first and second place. Lach had requested De Zoete earlier than the race if she ought to go for the win herself in such a scenario like this.
“She mentioned, ‘Sure, in fact, then you definately win additionally, and we are able to play extra playing cards’. I used to be actually grateful for this. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter who wins as a result of it’s a group victory and group podium,” Lach defined.
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“It’s very particular for me and for the entire group, how we work collectively, it was simply good.”
Whereas it isn’t unusual for 2 teammates to podium in a race, a complete podium sweep is way rarer. Because the introduction of the Girls’s WorldTour class for the 2016 season, there was just one 1-2-3 in a WWT race – stage 8 of the 2023 Tour de France Femmes when Marlen Reusser, Demi Vollering, and Lotte Kopecky took the three prime spots within the Pau ITT for SD Worx.
SD Worx additionally managed two podium sweeps on the summit end levels 2 and 9 of the 2021 Giro d’Italia Donne, which was not a WorldTour race that season, by Anna van der Breggen, Ashleigh-Moolman-Pasio, and Vollering. Nonetheless, they arrived in ones or twos after laborious ending climbs; sprinting to a 1-2-3 is unprecedented in a minimum of the final 9 seasons.
It additionally isn’t one thing you may actually plan, as proven by the cautionary story of SD Worx-Protime at this 12 months’s Tour of Britain Girls. After successful levels 1 to three with Kopecky and Lorena Wiebes, the group needed to reward Christine Majerus, so Kopecky and Wiebes held again. Nonetheless, Ruby Roseman-Gannon (Liv-AlUla-Jayco) outsprinted all three of them, leaving the group with a disappointing 2-3-4.
Going into the ultimate stage, De Zoete, Lach, and Schweinberger are first, second, and fourth total. And Lach promised that they weren’t executed but.
“We’ll attempt to hopefully be with three on the GC podium. We’ll attempt our greatest to take as a lot as potential from this. I’m very happy with my group and the way we work collectively, how we’re as a gaggle and as teammates, and likewise enormous due to our entire employees for the job they do right here,” she completed.
