Ireland’s Lara Gillespie produced a superb ride on stage four of the the Tour de France Femmes on Tuesday to earn a historic third-placed finish.<\/p>\n
Gillespie (UAE Team ADQ) positioned herself near the front of the peloton in a bunched sprint finish to cross the line in third place behind Lorena Wiebes (Team SD Worx-Protime) and Marianna Vos (Visma Lease a Bike).<\/p>\n
It’s a milestone achievement for 24-year-old Wicklow native Gillespie, who is 106th in the general classification.<\/p>\n
This is the first Tour de France Femmes to have an an Irish presence, with Gillespie, current national champion Mia Griffin and last year’s title holder Fiona Mangan all present.<\/p>\n
Griffin (Roland Le D\u00e9voluy) was 25th in today’s stage and sits 109th overall. Mangan (Winspace Orange Seal) three places further back in 28th today; she’s 97th in the GC.<\/p>\n
Wiebes stormed to her second consecutive stage victory thanks to a dominant sprint finish.<\/p>\n
The Dutch rider from Team SD Worx launched her move around 250 metres from the line and proved untouchable, sealing another emphatic stage victory ahead of compatriot Vos and Gillespie.<\/p>\n
The largely flat 130.7km stage from Saumur to Poitiers saw the peloton remain tightly packed until the closing stretch before a showdown amongst the sprinters.<\/p>\n
Wiebes timed her effort perfectly, leaving her rivals unable to respond before it was too late.<\/p>\n
She also triumphed in a chaotic sprint on Monday and now sits second overall, trailing Vos, who retains the yellow jersey.<\/p>\n
Additional reporting: Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland’s Lara Gillespie produced a superb ride on stage four of the the Tour de France Femmes on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32296,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-32295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}