ROTTERDAM, Netherlands: Defending women’s Tour de France champion Demi Vollering won a short, sharp time trial through the streets of Rotterdam on Tuesday to take the overall leader’s yellow jersey from fellow Dutch rider Charlotte Kool in the third stage of this year’s tour.
Vollering’s win made it three victories in three stages for Dutch riders as the eight-stage tour started in the Netherlands.
Vollering, of the SD Worx-Protime team finished the 6.3-kilometer (3.9-mile) dash over tram rails and bridges in downtown Rotterdam in 7 minutes, 25 seconds. Her victory came hours after Kool beat another Dutch rider Lorena Wiebes on the line in the second stage.
“I’m very surprised. I didn’t see this coming,” Vollering, one of the favorites to win the tour, told Dutch broadcaster NOS.
American Chloe Dygert, who won the bronze medal at the Paris Olympics individual time trial, and a gold on the Olympic track in the team pursuit, finished second behind Vollering in 7:30, narrowly ahead of Loes Adegeest.
Olympic time trial champion Grace Brown of Australia rode a gold-colored bike through the streets of Rotterdam but suffered a puncture, forcing her to swap onto another bike — without the gold paint job — and lose valuable time.
Vollering leads the race overall standings by three seconds from teammate Wiebes with Dygert in third place after three stages.
Earlier Tuesday, Kool, of the DSM-Firmenich PostNL team, made it two wins out of two as she passed Olympic road race silver medalist Marianne Vos then overtook Wiebes just before the finishing line in 1 hour, 32 minutes and 49 seconds. Vos finished third.
“Dreams seem to come true quite fast these days. First yesterday with the win and then to do it again with the team today in the yellow jersey, it is just incredible,” Kool said.
The first of Tuesday’s two stages took the riders 69.7 kilometers (43.3 miles) from Dordrecht to the nearby port city of Rotterdam through a typical Dutch landscape of pancake flat polders, waterside dikes and past World Heritage-listed windmills before ending in downtown Rotterdam.
Kool was wearing the leader’s yellow jersey after winning the opening stage in The Hague on Monday, kept it after her second straight stage win and then had to cede it to Vollering after the time trial.
After starting in the southern Dutch town of Valkenburg on Wednesday, the race heads south into Belgium, finishing in Liege. It then winds through eastern France to finish Aug. 18 at the top of the punishing climb of the Alpe d’Huez’s famous 21 hairpin bends.
