Ladies Thalita de Jong climbs up to 5th in GC Tour de France Femmes
On 87 kilometers from the finish a group of six riders rode away, among them Justine Ghekiere (AG Insurance - Soudal Team). “It was a long stage today, going up and down from the start. It was hard which made it difficult to attack. An attack came later on, with the break taking maximum 5 minutes. The bunch also became smaller and smaller, you see the tiredness starts to kick in for everyone”, Thalita de Jong explained after the finish.
“Towards the final climb we were up there with quite a group, the pace was really high. Ghekiere rode away of the break and eventually won. Anna (Van Wersch) and Audrey (De Keersmaeker) were with me towards the climb, they really helped me a lot. From then on I had to hang on and not give up. I really had a hard time with the high pace, but I focused on not letting Lucinda Brand and Shirin van Anrooij ride away as they were close to me in the GC.”
“The differences in pace made it really hard, I dropped for a moment with a couple of riders but we came back. I still had a strong last 200 meters, and I finished 6th. I'm 5th in GC now, really nice. Tomorrow the hardest stage and the final day.”
Mieke Docx unfortunately didn’t finish, she gave up in the beginning of today’s stage. “I think it’s logical after two hard days, she was empty. It’s not nice, but we will try to put that smile again on her face. She has to look back positively to this experience. She will definitely come out stronger of this. And tomorrow we will go all in again with the 6 of us", de Jong said.
Picture: Brecht Steenhouwer
