Kim Le Court of the AG Insurance - Soudal Team has outsprinted
Puck Pieterse,
Demi Vollering and
Cedrine Kerbaol to take a thrilling victory at
Liege-Bastogne-Liege Femmes 2025 for the biggest road win of her career so far!
Eight riders got up ahead of the peloton early to form the day's breakaway. With 100km to go, they'd managed to build up an advantage of around four minutes over the peloton. They were all caught by the peloton with still around 70km to go, with a counter-attack from Maeva Squiban (UAE Team ADQ) then giving the bunch another carrot to chase shortly after.
On La Redoute, one of the big casualties was somewhat surprisingly Elisa Longo Borghini, with the Italian national champion dropping out the back of the main bunch. At the front of it meanwhile, Squiban had been caught, with Pauliena Rooijakkers being the next rider to attack off the front of the bunch. By the time the final 20km was reached, Rooijakkers had been joined by Anna van der Breggen, Cedrine Kerbaol and Antonia Niedermaier, with the quartet around 20 seconds clear of the chase.
Once they were caught, a five-rider group of Kerbaol, Demi Vollering, Lotte Kopecky, Puck Pieterse and Marlen Reusser cleared the final categorised climb of the day together. Sensing there wasn't total cohesion in the group though, Kerbaol attempted a flyer, and all the rest of the group did was look at each other. At 9km to go though, the trio of Pieterse, Vollering and Kim Le Court managed to bridge the gap.
At 5km to go, the leading quartet had 27 seconds on the nearest chase group that included the likes of Kopecky, Van der Breggen and Katarzyna Niewiadoma among others. As the gap maintained around the 30 second mark heading into the finale, victory and the final podium looked guaranteed to be settled between the leading four.
In the fight for the line, Vollering was stuck on the front. The first to open the sprint was Le Court and despite the fight of Pieterse from behind, it was victory for the former Giro stage winner.