"It’s not nice for Anna to crash out like this" - Mischa Bredewold dedicates 2nd Itzulia stage win to abandoned team leader Van der Breggen

Stage 2 proved something of a rollercoaster for Team SD Worx - Protime at the 2025 Itzulia Women. Ahead of the day's racing getting underway, the team were dealt a blow by the announcement of GC hopeful Anna van der Breggen abandoning due to injury, only for Mischa Bredewold to restore the joy within SD Worx by taking a powerful stage win in the sprint.

“I still feel I’m a little bit in a different world because, woah, it was a very hard stage, very hard sprint. I can only say thank you to my team," reflected Bredewold in her post-stage interview after her second win in as many days in the Basque Country. "Mikayla Harvey and Steffi Häberlin today, of course Marie Schreiber and Marta Lach in the beginning, I am speechless, actually. They did such an incredible job. I owe everything to them.”

Bredewold also had time to share a thought for her abandoned team leader. "It’s not nice for [Anna] herself to crash out like this, and secondly, for the team, it’s not nice, she is such a strong, class rider that you’re definitely missing her on stages like this," Bredewold assessed. "Steffi and I both had a hard time on the second climb, yesterday felt a bit better than today, to be honest, but luckily we came back, and then it was just full gas, working, jumping, all the time."

And after two wins on the spin, confidence is now understandably high heading into a much trickier and tougher stage 3 on Sunday. "It’s definitely going to be the hardest stage. I mean, obviously we are going to try, that’s not a secret, but it will be very, very hard," she previews. "There are a few girls who are going incredibly strong on the climbs, so I’m going to need an extremely good day tomorrow to have a chance, so we’ll see. It will be up to fate, I guess."