Jackson wins Stage 2 sprint, Vos and Deignan caught up in late crashes

Alison Jackson won Stage 2 of the Vuelta Femenina for EF Education-Cannondale in a frantic sprint finish, with two crashes in the final three kilometres taking out some of the favourites.

The red jersey changed hands as well, with Blanka Vas (SD Worx-Protime) doing enough to wrest control of the overall lead from Gaia Realini (Lidl-Trek) after crossing the line second just behind Jackson.

Marianne Vos (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Lizzie Deignan (Lidl-Trek) were two of the riders to come down in the closing stages as the rain began to fall in the final few moments of the race. Deignan had only just come back from a broken arm sustained in the Tour of Flanders a few weeks ago.

“I had a bit of a disappointing spring,” a jubilant Jackson said afterwards. “You can only control what you can control. Coming into the Vuelta I just had a lot of fire and I was going to do anything it took to get this win. The team really believed in me.

“To have a win [here] is just another great thing to put on the resume!”

This win was Jackson’s first stage victory in a Grand Tour, with the Canadian jumping up and down in the arms of her team-mates at the finish line with pure unbridled joy.

The second stage – a 118.5km route from Bunol to Moncofa – was always expected to end in a sprint of some sort, but that didn’t stop an early breakaway from heading up the road. It didn’t feature any favourites and thus was allowed a fairly healthy three-minute lead on an overcast day.

That lead was slowly reeled in as the peloton approached the only real climb of the day, the Cat. 3 L’Oronet, with Karlijn Swinkels (UAE Team ADQ) taking the Queen of the Mountain points. But it was there that the stage briefly broke apart, with Visma setting a high tempo at the front and doing everything they could to drop as many riders as possible.

They achieved that aim at least, dropping the very quick Charlotte Kool (Team dsm) – the Dutchwoman winding up in a chase group a couple of minutes back.

Anneke Dijkstra (Volkerwessels) was the next to attack once the race stabilised on the flat, going in search of bonus seconds in the intermediate sprint. Those she gained, with Vas and Grace Brown (FDJ Suez) hoovering up the others in the battle for the green jersey.

It all came down to a fast and frantic finish, with that little bit of rain arriving to add more drama to proceedings. Those rain drops wound up contributing to two crashes in the final couple of kilometres, which wiped out a fair few favourites, including Deignan, with Vos also seemingly caught up in the chaos and unable to contest the sprint.

The nerves were very much on display but for the riders who made it through unscathed, Kristen Faulkner’s dream lead out delivered Jackson towards the line with such speed and momentum, no one was going to catch her.

Vas – who had ridden a very tactically astute race – crossed the line in second, ahead of Swinkels. That was enough to grab Vas the red jersey, displacing Realini, who was looked after by Deignan with aplomb until those final few chaotic moments.

“Ah man, I came in with a real fire to win this,” Jackson said after she’d caught her breath. “Starting with the rain, you take the mentality ‘it can either be really good or you have to be careful’. I was in the right place at the right time and I had to play it safe, play it smart.

“It was all down to my team-mates making up the distance lost. Then in the final the four of us who made it through the crashes, Kristen [Faulkner] was first and I knew no one would be able to get around [us].”

As for those crashes, it was the first that took out Deignan as she seemingly slipped on a greasy white line straight after a roundabout, while Emma Norsgaard (Movistar) hit the deck in the second crash.

Tuesday’s stage is a lumpy route from Lucena to Teruel, so might be one for the GC contenders over the sprinters, or even an opportunistic breakaway.