AMNEVILLE: Hungary’s Blanka Vas won the fifth stage of the women’s Tour de France on Thursday with Dutch teammate Demi Vollering losing the race lead after being caught up in a big crash. Poland’s Katarzyna Niewiadoma finished second to take the leader’s yellow jersey from defending champion Vollering who dropped to ninth overall. A pile-up with six kilometres to go involving 10 riders including Vollering decimated the peloton in the run to Amneville in northeastern France. The Team SD Worx leader now trails 1min 19sec behind her main rival Niewiadoma who had started the stage 34 seconds behind Vollering.

Shocked, suffering back pain and cuts to her left thigh, the Dutch star took more than a minute to remount to finish the stage. The fall split the peloton and in a four-way sprint, Vas dominated Niewiadoma, German Liane Lippert and American Olympic champion Kristen Faulkner.

“The last kilometres were really chaotic. Overall, this start to the Tour has been really nervous so it was important to be well placed at the front to avoid incidents,” said Niewiadoma. “I’m really very happy to take the jersey, it feels exceptional.” She added: “Now 1min 19sec in the mountains is not much, especially considering the profile of the last stage. Of course, I feel good and I’m confident but I also know that Demi is an incredibly strong champion.” On Friday, the sixth stage covers 159km with a climb up the the Cote des Fins less than 15km from the line which could prove decisive. The Tour finishes on Sunday with one of cycling’s most challenging climbs up Alpe d’Huez.

Meanwhile, Yanina Kuskova rode Thursday’s fifth stage of the women’s Tour de France as the sole survivor of a team that had thought twice about even being there. Tashkent City Women Professional Cycling Team, from the second-tier Continental Tour, has struggled on its debut in the women’s Tour de France.

Barely halfway through the race’s fourth stage on Wednesday, six of its seven riders had already quit. “Our budget is perhaps 100 times smaller than any other Continental team,” said sporting director Gleb Groysman. “We hesitated to come.”

The team is made up exclusively of women from Uzbekistan and was set up to help the country qualify riders for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. On Monday’s first stage from Rotterdam, Tashkent lost four of its seven riders, unable to keep up with the pace of the peloton even on completely flat terrain. Mohinabonu Elmurodova, Madina Kakhkhorova, Ekaterina Knebeleva and Asal Rizaeva all failed to reach the finish line in The Hague.

On Wednesday, Nafosat Kozieva chose not to start the hilly stage from Valkenburg to Liege. Then Margarita Misyurina retired just before the halfway. Kuskova survived Thursday’s fifth stage, finishing in a large group that crossed the line 4 minutes and 58 seconds behind the winner. The 22-year-old sits in the middle of the overall classification, in 76th place, 15 minutes 9 seconds behind leader Katarzyna Niewiadoma. “The girls cried every day,” Groysman, a Russian-American, told AFP. Of the seven riders, four are in the under-23 category.

The team travelled with just two replacement bikes and a few wheels. “Most of our riders are students and they only earn 200 to 300 euros ($220-$330) a month from cycling,” said Groysman.

‘Not a cycling country’

The Tashkent team was set up in 2022, at the instigation of the government. It achieved its Olympic goal with one rider in the men’s time-trial and two in the women’s road race. One of those women, 44-year-old Olga Zabelinskaya, did not enter the Tour, the other was Kuskova.

Uzbekistan sprinter Djamolidine Abdoujaparov won the points classification in the men’s Tour de France three times between 1991 and 1994. Yet it “is absolutely not a cycling country”, said Groysman, who puts the number of female riders at less than 100. The team qualified under this season’s International Cycling Union (UCI) rules, which required race organiser Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO) to invite last year’s top two Continental Tour teams. — AFP