{"id":567070,"date":"2026-05-05T08:14:22","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T08:14:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/567070\/"},"modified":"2026-05-05T08:14:22","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T08:14:22","slug":"vuelta-femenina-stage-1-noemi-ruegg-storms-uphill-sprint-to-beat-kopecky-and-koch-to-first-leaders-jersey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/567070\/","title":{"rendered":"Vuelta Femenina stage 1: Noemi R\u00fcegg storms uphill sprint to beat Kopecky and Koch to first leader’s jersey"},"content":{"rendered":"

Noemi R\u00fcegg (EF Education-Oatly) won stage 1 of the Vuelta Femenina<\/a> to take the first red leader’s jersey of the 2026 edition.<\/p>\n

On an uphill finish in Salvaterra de Mi\u00f1o, R\u00fcegg 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.<\/p>\n

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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 R\u00fcegg was fastest.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI can\u2019t really believe it. It\u2019s 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\u2019s insane to finish it off like this, I don\u2019t know what to say,\u201d said R\u00fcegg<\/a>, overwhelmed by her victory.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt 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\u2019re racing, I hope everyone\u2019s fine. But we just stuck to the plan, focused on the final and finished it off.”<\/p>\n

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 R\u00fcegg into position for the sprint with a short but steep kicker after the last corner with 300 metres to go.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis 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,\u201d said R\u00fcegg before receiving the red leader\u2019s jersey.<\/p>\n

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R\u00fcegg 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 R\u00fcegg’s 10-second bonus for winning the stage. R\u00fcegg takes the red jersey by virtue of her superior placing on the stage.<\/p>\n

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\"Team\n<\/p>\n

R\u00fcegg pulls on the red leader’s jersey (Image credit: Getty Images)How it unfolded<\/p>\n

Covering a total of 113.9km from Mar\u00edn to Salvaterra de Mi\u00f1o, 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.<\/p>\n

Yuliia Biriukova attacked on the Alto de Cruceiro but was caught just before the top, and Ma\u00ebva Squiban (UAE Team ADQ) beat Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio (AG Insurance-Soudal) to the maximum points.<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

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\"SALVATERRA\n<\/p>\n

The roads were slippery all day (Image credit: Getty Images)<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\"SALVATERRA\n<\/p>\n

A dramatic late split featuring Koch on the front and Pauline Ferrand-Prevot in third position (Image credit: Getty Images)<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Marianne Vos (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Paternoster were among the crashed riders, and up front, five riders had a small gap: Pauline Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot (Visma-Lease a Bike), Alessia Vigilia (Uno-X Mobility), and the FDJ United-Suez trio of Juliette Berthet, Koch, and Eva van Agt.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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 R\u00fcegg went through the last corner almost side-by-side, and R\u00fcegg was the strongest in the sprint.<\/p>\n

Results<\/p>\n

Results powered by FirstCycling<\/a><\/p>\n

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Subscribe to Cyclingnews for unlimited access to our La Vuelta Femenina coverage as the likes of Pauline Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot, Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney and others battle it out. Don’t miss any of the breaking news, reports, and analysis from one of the biggest women’s stage races of the season. Find out more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Noemi R\u00fcegg (EF Education-Oatly) won stage 1 of the Vuelta Femenina to take the first red leader’s jersey…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":567071,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-567070","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\/567070","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=567070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567070\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/567071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}