ALBI, FRANCE: Rookie Ricarda Bauernfeind broke away to take the fifth stage of the Women´s Tour de France on Thursday while Demi Vollering, one of the race favourites, slid down the standings after being hit with a 20-second penalty
Lotte Kopecky increased her overall lead after finishing fourth, at the front of the chasing pack, because her team-mate Vollering, who started the day in second and finished in the same time, was punished for "drafting".
Vollering suffered a rear-wheel puncture with 65km to go and dropped back to the SD Worx team car. As a race marshall shouted at her to stop, the Dutch rider tucked into the slipstream of the car, which was trying to weave between the vehicles of other teams, as she set off in pursuit of the peloton.
After a video review, she was hit with a penalty that dropped her from second to seventh. She is 1min 3sec behind Belgian Kopecky but more importantly slipped 12sec behind her great Dutch rival Annemiek van Vleuten, the defending champion, who is fifth.
"I have no clue why I get this penalty," Vollering told Cyclingnews. "I could not pass when there are two lines of cars next to each other. I dare not to pass because it´s so dangerous"
"I never knew that this was forbidden, to come after a mechanical." Kopecky said her team-mate´s punishment was "astonishing." "This penalty is too severe," said Kopecky. "Demi took shelter after suffering a puncture, not because she was in difficulty."
South African Ashleigh Moolman jumped to second, 49sec behind Kopecky. Bauernfeind, in her first season at the elite professional level, was overjoyed after becoming the youngest stage winner in the two-year history of the event. "It´s fantastic," the 23-year-old German told Eurosport.