Anna van der Breggen takes first win since return thanks to demon descent on stage 4 of La Vuelta Femenina 2025

Team SD Worx - Protime's Anna van der Breggen has taken the first win of her second professional career thanks to a demon descent in the finale of stage 4 at the 2025 La Vuelta Femenina.

There was a big fight for the breakaway over the first half of the stage, but every attack that managed to get a gap was soon reeled by in the peloton, only for counter moves to follow and meet the same fate. In fact, no one had managed to get clear ahead of the summit of the opening climb of the day with around 50km to go. With the peloton holding the front, Queen of the Mountains specialist Justine Ghekiere popped out at the front to take maximum points at the top of the Cat 2 Alto del Moncayo.

At the intermediate sprint with around 30km to go, Red Jersey Femke Gerritse outsprinted Demi Vollering and Marianne Vos to extend her lead in the general classification thanks to 6 bonus seconds. With the testing Puerto de El Buste climb coming inside the last 20km, a sprint finish was by no means guaranteed, and when FDJ - Suez came to the front and upped the pace for Vollering, the bunch's numbers quickly began to diminish.

One of the surprising names caught out was Paris-Roubaix winner Pauline Ferrand-Prevot. Race leader Gerritse was also missing from the front of the race. With it downhill all the way to the line in the final 10km, the pace was incredibly high. Demon descender Cedrine Kerbaol attempted to push things even further on the descent, but once the Frenchwoman was caught, Anna van der Breggen then countered with a move of her own.

FDJ - Suez were leading the chase of the Dutch star, but Van der Breggen remained out ahead into the final 2km. Behind meanwhile, her teammate Gerritse had got back into contact with the group of main favourites. The victory though, was Van der Breggen's.