The unstoppable trio of Mavi Garcia, Silke Smulders & Ella Wyllie continued their superb run at the Vuelta a Andalucía with another clean sweep of podium placings, led home by Wyllie on the third and penultimate stage.
With a stage win already under her belt after a textbook ride on the opening stage for Smulders and after a super solo victory on yesterday’s lengthy stage for Garcia, today it was young New Zealand champion Wyllie’s turn to throw her arms into the air.
After also claiming the top three podium spots on stage one and in the overall classification after day one, today the triumphant trio successfully cemented their advantage even further.
Starting strong, the Liv AlUla Jayco riders managed to demolish the peloton on the short 78km route, riding away from their competition on the main climb of the day, the Alto de Zurrón, thanks to early help from teammates Alex Manly and Quinty Ton.
Only one rider was able to follow the trio’s initial move but she soon dropped off the pace leaving the the Spaniard, New Zealander and Dutch powerhouse to put more distance between themselves and their competition as the kilometres ticked down.
15 riders formed a chase group behind but were unable to make the junction across to the trio, who had opened up a healthy advantage of over one minute as they led into the final 25km.
Continuing to push hard on the pedals with the goal of gaining as much time as possible for the overall classification, the trio arrived at the finishing town of Velez Malaga together, before Wyllie jumped ahead to cross the line for her third race victory of the season.
With one 100km stage remaining tomorrow, Garcia leads the general classification over her teammates with Liv AlUla Jayco naturally leading the team classification too.
Ella Wyllie
“The girls were on fire today. It takes a team, we might have crossed the finish line first, second and third but there’s five of us here and everyone just fully committed to the team and plan. I think it’s shows really great signs for the future, and we’ll just build off this race. We still have one final day tomorrow, but it feels good to be leading the overall classification and hopefully we can wrap it up tomorrow. It’s been an amazing few days.”
Shawn Clarke – Sport Director
“We have won all three stage with a different rider each day which is pretty dominating and it feels great. The coolest part is just how the team is reacting; they really want to share the wealth around and make sure everybody’s part of it. We want to make sure that Alex and Quinty are also super heralded because they do a lot of the work in the first part of the stage to set it up for the others. So, we are lucky that those two are so experienced and they know how to ride and pace everything.
The riders have raced a lot in spring and the Spanish races so to end the block on a high note will give a lot of motivation for everybody as they start training towards the next big races. The team moral is super high, the course has been super nice, so it has been an amazing race to be at.”
Vuelta a Andalucía – stage 3 results:
1. Ella Wyllie (Liv AlUla Jayco)
2. Mavi Garcia (Liv AlUla Jayco)
3. Silke Smulders (Liv AlUla Jayco)
Vuelta a Andalucía – General Classification after stage 3:
1. Mavi Garcia (Liv AlUla Jayco)
2. Silke Smulders (Liv AlUla Jayco)
3. Ella Wyllie (Liv AlUla Jayco)
Photo: Sprint Cycling
