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Ruby Roseman-Gannon is at her team car with a race radio issue. Seems to be fixed now and she’ll be chasing back.
Road has started to go up, but we’re not officially on the Stirling climb. We’re about 3km to the QOM, a good launching point for an attack.
90km to go
Led by Liv AlUla Jayco, the riders speeding down the road, with a few riders having trouble staying in the tight peloton with 93km to go.
Lidl-Trek, Liv AlUla Jayco, EF Education-Oatly and Ceratizit-WNT are all represented at the front of the peloton, still grouped together
Peloton all together as they are descending away from Stirling. Race leader Rüegg sitting behind her teammate Maeve Plouffe in the peloton.
Josie Talbot (Liv AlUla Jayco) at the head of the peloton, speed is already high.
Flag drop and racing has started!
Race director Stuart O’Grady asking the riders to ease off in the short neutral zone, and he’s waiting to drop the flag.
“I think it’s a hard course to defend a jersey on,” Amanda Spratt (Lidl-Trek) said. “I think that will be quite difficult. I expect to see very aggressive riding. I’m sure we’re going to be aggressive, and I think it’s going to be really exciting. I certainly think the gaps are not huge on GC so I don’t think it’s really set in stone yet.”
The final stage in Stirling is bound to be a cracker.
All the riders are tucked in their air-conditioned mini-buses before the start, and the ice vests are out. Temperature has already hit 35C in central Adelaide and while it may just be a little cooler among the hills of Stirling it still feels every bit of that with a sting in the morning sun.
Stage 3 of the Women’s Tour Down Under is set to start in about 10 minutes On tap is constant undulation with barely a moment of flat terrain in the 25km circuit for a total of 105.9km stage in Stirling. The loop includes the Stirling climb, which stretches over two kilometres and reaches a maximum gradient of 11.1%, though its average is a far milder 3.7%. The riders will tackle the climb five times.
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Stage 2 winner Noemi Rüegg (EF Education-Oatly) tops the general classification with a 15-second lead on Silke Smulders (Liv AlUla Jayco) and 33 seconds on Mie Bjørndal Ottestad (Uno-X Mobility). Polish champion Dominika Wlodarczyk (UAE Team ADQ) sits in fourth place, 36 seconds down and only one second ahead of trio Justine Ghekiere (AG Insurance-Soudal), Neve Bradbury (Canyon-Sram zondacrypto)and Elise Chabbey (FDJ-Suez).
Eleonora Ciabocco (Picnic PostNL) leads the best young rider classification, with 10 seconds on Silke Smulders (Liv AlUla Jayco).
“At first, I thought, ‘Oh no, this was too early; I can’t keep going like this,’ but then I looked back, and I had a gap, so I had no other choice” – Noemi Rüegg explains her big Willunga Hill victory on stage 2.
Welcome to Cyclingnews’ live coverage of stage 3 of the Women’s Tour Down Under.
