Noemi Rüegg (EF Education-Oatly) won stage 1 of the Vuelta Femenina to take the first red leader’s jersey of the 2026 edition.
On an uphill finish in Salvaterra de Miño, Rüegg launched her sprint with 175 metres to go and held off Lotte Kopecky (SD Worx-Protime) and Franziska Koch (FDJ United-Suez) to win the stage.
Most of the stage was uneventful, but a hairpin turn and technical descent in the last 10km caused crashes that split the peloton, leading to a high-speed run-in to the finish, where Rüegg was fastest.
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“I can’t really believe it. It’s just a dream to win a Grand Tour stage. The team believed in me so much, more than I did. It was a big goal to go for the win, it’s insane to finish it off like this, I don’t know what to say,” said Rüegg, overwhelmed by her victory.
“It was a hectic day because it was raining from the start. The descents were really tricky and slippery. In the last descent, we saw a few crashes as well, that is always hard to see when you’re racing, I hope everyone’s fine. But we just stuck to the plan, focused on the final and finished it off.”
After the crashes, a group of five riders had a small gap with 7.5km to go, but EF Education-Oatly chased hard to bring them back and bring Rüegg into position for the sprint with a short but steep kicker after the last corner with 300 metres to go.
“This finish was perfect for me, if I could draw my dream stage, it would end exactly like this. I knew I could trust on a long sprint, from the last corner I wanted to go all in. The team put me in a great position, and then I just went all out. I had a gap immediately, then I looked back and saw I can make it to the finish. It was like a dream,” said Rüegg before receiving the red leader’s jersey.
Rüegg is tied for time at the top of the general classification with Koch, who picked up a six-second bonus at an early intermediate sprint, as well a a four-second bonus for second place, to match Rüegg’s 10-second bonus for winning the stage. Rüegg takes the red jersey by virtue of her superior placing on the stage.
Rüegg pulls on the red leader’s jersey (Image credit: Getty Images)How it unfolded
Covering a total of 113.9km from Marín to Salvaterra de Miño, the first part of the stage criss-crossed the Morrazo peninsula in Galicia and included two third-category climbs, the Alto de Cruceiro and the Alto da Portela.
Yuliia Biriukova attacked on the Alto de Cruceiro but was caught just before the top, and Maëva Squiban (UAE Team ADQ) beat Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio (AG Insurance-Soudal) to the maximum points.
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Moolman-Pasio got the better of Squiban on the Alto da Portela, though, putting both riders on 10 mountain points. Squiban finished higher on the stage with a fifth place and will wear the polka-dot mountains classification jersey on stage 2.
The roads were slippery all day (Image credit: Getty Images)
The stage then turned south, heading through rolling terrain towards the Portuguese border. The peloton split briefly on the descent but quickly came back together again halfway through the stage.
In the rain, several riders were dropped on a descent with 28km to go, the most prominent of them being Gaia Realini (Lidl-Trek). Although they chased hard for the remainder of the stage, Realini ended up losing 2:23 minutes in GC.
The intermediate sprint in Ponteareas that was won by Koch ahead of Letizia Paternoster (Liv AlUla Jayco) and Loes Adegeest (Lidl-Trek), netting the German champion a six-second time bonus.
An attack by Riejanne Markus (Lidl-Trek) on a short, unclassified climb 20km from the finish led to a short-lived front group of nine riders, but they were never more than a few metres ahead and quickly got reeled in again.
A dramatic late split featuring Koch on the front and Pauline Ferrand-Prevot in third position (Image credit: Getty Images)
Nine kilometres from the line, a very tight hairpin turn caused congestion in the peloton as the riders further back had to come almost to a standstill to negotiate the 180-degree turn. This stretched out the race, and together with the technical descent that followed causing several crashes, the race split.
Marianne Vos (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Paternoster were among the crashed riders, and up front, five riders had a small gap: Pauline Ferrand-Prévot (Visma-Lease a Bike), Alessia Vigilia (Uno-X Mobility), and the FDJ United-Suez trio of Juliette Berthet, Koch, and Eva van Agt.
The three FDJ United-Suez riders tried to keep the move going, but EF Education-Oatly organised the chase behind and brought them back with 4.5km to go.
Vos returned to the peloton in the penultimate kilometre and still sprinted to a seventh place, but she was too far back to contend for the victory. Instead, Koch, Kopecky, and Rüegg went through the last corner almost side-by-side, and Rüegg was the strongest in the sprint.
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