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PARIS—Lorena Wiebes of the Netherlands sprinted to victory on Sunday within the first stage of the ladies’s Tour de France which returned after a 33-year absence.
The Group DSM rider struck within the final 150 meters of the 82-kilometer (51-mile) circuit in Paris to beat former Olympic champion Marianne Vos to the road on the Champs-Elysees.
Wiebes punched the air in celebration.
“I’m actually completely happy that I used to be lastly capable of race on the Champs-Elysees,” Wiebes stated. “It was a tough race, a quick one. It feels actually particular to trip right here round Paris and much more particular to put on the yellow jersey.”
Tour of Flanders champion Lotte Kopecky was third.
It’s the primary time since 1989 {that a} ladies’s version of the Tour de France is being held. Tour de France organizer Amaury Sport Group (ASO) beforehand organized La Course, a one-day race held in Paris coinciding with the lads’s Tour.
The primary stage began from the Eiffel Tower and ended on the enduring avenue, simply hours earlier than the conclusion of the lads’s race.
The “Tour de France Femmes” will finish July 31 in jap France at La Tremendous Planche des Belles Filles, a spectacular uphill end usually visited by the lads’s Tour.
The eight-stage race goals to grow to be a everlasting fixture on the ladies’s world tour biking calendar. A Tour stage race came about from 1984 to 1989, operating parallel with the lads’s version, earlier than later being shortened. Numerous different variations have been tried however they normally have been underfunded.
On-line health platform Zwift has signed on with a four-year sponsorship after riders spent years calling for a ladies’s model of the race. Some rode each stage of the lads’s race to boost consciousness of the difficulty till ASO introduced the brand new occasion.
Picture credit: AP
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