Benji Naesen

The further we got onto the climb, the more we heard about the drama happening at the top.

And...

I'll be completely honest, I still don't know 100% what actually happened, but the announcement that was given about 7k from the original top was that due to an ice sheet that could potentially fall onto the road, the race is going to be stopped 1k before the top of Finestre, which means we don't have the last k of Finestre, we don't have the descent afterwards, the valley, and we don't have the final climb to Cisteria.

Now, to be clear,

If it's dangerous, 100% okay to make that decision.

I wasn't there.

I have no clue how to judge ice sheets and avalanches and potential avalanche dangers.

So I'm going to take their word for it that it was the right decision to make.

But from a rider's perspective...

Team Evolving better gets a move on in the last 7k of this finestry now.

I think so as well.

I do want to judge afterwards whether I do think a change could have happened in the results if the stage played out as planned.

But before we get there, though, like we said, Lauren Dixon was taking over, was hard pacing up to the point where that decision was made.

And I think with about seven kilometers to go to the actual finish now, we had Dixon bringing the group down to Volring, Anna van der Breggen, Holmgren, Niedermeyer, De Vries, and Nia Fisher-Black before she dipped out.

So that's the situation here, six riders up the road, Reusers dropped from early on on the climb, so she's in Narnia.

She also crashed yesterday, so that's relatively understandable.

But I feel like the first attack came from Demi Voting, where I saw her attacking and then Niedermeyer, who was riding basically at the front at this point,

She easily half-wheeled during Volring's attack.

This was shocking to see.

I feel like we noticed something similar three days ago in the previous GC stage where Niedermeyer looks always like she's nose-breathing.