In the footsteps of Neilson Powless: how Noemi Rüegg cracked UAE trio

Even if you have three riders from the same team in a four-rider breakaway, it’s still no guarantee of victory. Neilson Powless proved that last year in Dwars door Vlaanderen against a trio from Visma | Lease a Bike, and Noemi Ruëgg from EF Education-Oatly also showed it in the final stage of the Tour Down Under for women against three riders from UAE Team ADQ.

The biggest difference from Powless’s masterclass back then was that this time the GC ambitions also thoroughly changed the tactics when Rüegg broke away with Mavi Garcia, Paula Blasi, and Dominika Wlodarczyk. Rüegg had the advantage that she was already a few seconds ahead of the UAE riders in the overall standings, but all four were certainly about twenty seconds behind race leader Ally Wollaston from FDJ-SUEZ. If they were caught again, none of them would win.

"I knew they wouldn’t stop pushing because then they would lose their own chances in the GC as well. I basically just had to follow their attacks and trust my acceleration. In the end, that was the perfect scenario. I think if riders from other teams had been there, it would have caused more chaos," she told Cyclingnews.

Rüegg had a plan for herself towards the end. "In the last five kilometers it was mostly downhill. I think it would have been different if it was flat or even uphill. That would have made it a lot harder for me," said Rüegg. "Now it was pretty simple. I knew they were going to attack me. So the advice was: follow attack after attack. Don’t think too far ahead. And then it worked."

With that, Rüegg took both the stage win and the overall victory at the Tour Down Under. “You don’t win a Women’s WorldTour stage race every day, so you have to enjoy it. And I also owe a lot to my teammates. So I told them I’m treating them to dinner and drinks tonight," concluded the Swiss after her second consecutive TDU win.