Elise Chabbey wins Tour de Romandie Féminin

Elise Chabbey started the final stage with start and finish in Aigle eight seconds behind Urska Zigart. The route profile included five short climbs. Nevertheless, the task seemed too undemanding overall for the Romande to turn things around. This assumption seemed to hold true until the last obstacle.

But then Elise Chabbey stepped up the pace once again on the last few meters of the final 1.2-kilometre climb. For the time being, only the Spaniard Paula Blasi, the winner of the individual time trial on Friday, was able to follow the Geneva rider. Above all, however, Elise Chabbey was able to distance herself from Urska Zigart; at one point the time difference between the two was almost half a minute - partly because the Slovenian had briefly left the course on the descent after making a mistake.

In the end, however, it was still close and the final was very tense. In the end, seven seconds decided in favor of Elise Chabbey, who secured third place on Sunday behind Hungary's Blanka Vas and Paula Blasi. Urska Zigart followed eleven seconds behind the top trio, which together with the four-second bonus for Elise Chabbey resulted in a seven-second lead in the final standings.

With the overall victory, Elise Chabbey completed the most successful phase of her career to date in a wonderful way. Two weeks ago, she had won the mountain classification at the Tour de France, and on Saturday she won the second stage of the Tour of Western Switzerland with the tough final climb to La Tzoumaz, thus triumphing for the first time at World Tour level.