Going into the Vuelta Femenina, Gaia Realini (Lidl-Trek) was certainly one of her staff’s co-leaders alongside Elisa Longo Borghini, having received a stage and completed third total in 2023.
The minuscule climber was being protected within the opening TTT by Lizzie Deignan and crossed the road first as Lidl-Trek received the stage, taking the pink chief’s jersey for a day. But on stage 4, Realini misplaced two minutes within the echelons, and a crash on stage 5 now implies that she has to desert the race.
Realini crashed on the high-speed descent of the Alto del Monasterio de San Juan de la Peña with 28km to go.
Her teammate Brodie Chapman got here again to help the 22-year-old Italian who began strolling in the direction of her bike earlier than leaning on the roadside cliff once more and sitting down once more for a short while.
With the race physician’s automobile and the staff automobile now having stopped on the website, Realini obtained her spare bike and continued the race. Judging by the TV footage, no concussion examine was carried out within the roughly 40 seconds between Realini getting up and being again on her bike.
Piloted down the remainder of the descent by Chapman earlier than tackling the ending climb, Realini completed 7:03 minutes behind stage winner and new pink jersey Demi Vollering (SD Worx-Protime) and was checked by the staff physician proper after the stage end.
On the morning of stage 6, Lidl-Trek announced that Realini could be going to the hospital as a substitute of beginning the stage, having sustained a minor concussion and suffered from ache in her chest and proper elbow.
Realini’s exit from the race leaves Lidl-Trek with simply 5 of their unique seven-woman squad after Ellen van Dijk additionally needed to abandon because of accidents suffered within the stage 1 TTT crash.
Longo Borghini now leads the American squad’s GC ambitions and sits 28 seconds down on Vollering going into the ultimate three phases.
