Lucinda Brand (Lidl-Trek) attacked in the fourth and final stages of the Vuelta a Burgos Feminas, starting the decisive climb of the Alto de Rosavientos one minute ahead of the Peloton and finally finishing runner-up behind stage and GC winner Demi Volling (SD Worx-Pro Time). It was. 

The organizers rewarded the brand with a combat award for her moves that might not have happened without the brand's actions on Stage 1. On the first day, the brand stopped within 150 meters of the line to make sure that the crashed teammate Elisa Balsamo was okay. 

The brand was technically not directly held by the crash, so she was given a three-minute deficit. Without this time loss, the 34-year-old Dutch woman would theoretically have finished the GC podium, but the brand said things would be more complicated than that.

"Then, to be honest, I wouldn't have gotten a single minute advantage!" I guess I would still have made a good climb, but not as good as when I suddenly got to the GC podium, we need to be realistic. Sometimes this gives you some benefit in a different way," the brand told Cyclingnews. 

"I just wanted to get into the break today because I knew it would be a good situation for me in the descent in the final. It had nothing to do with the first day. I just wanted to make something good out of it because I was feeling good the whole week."

Brazilian champion Tata Magalhaes had been solo before the race for almost 30km before the brand joined her at 20km to bridge from a short-lived breakaway. The live footage was interrupted due to bad weather, so we asked the brand to summarize the action.

"There was a little break, but there was no real cooperation. I then attacked and no one was reacting so I could ride her. Then I just tried to motivate her to keep doing her best, she was already normal on her solo ride before and we tried to keep the pace as we could," she explained.

Together, they increased their advantage in minutes before the brand continued on its own with the rise of Rozavientos.

"I still had about one minute, so I just tried to find a good pace, have a good rhythm. I knew the second part was steep, so I had to leave something for that," she said.

Passed by Vollering in the last part of the climb, Brand still had the opportunity to maybe come back to the descent, but she got information on the gap to the GC leader After the descent, Brand was only 22 seconds behind to 5km, but lost ground again on a slight uphill climb to the line and eventually went down 51 seconds. It was a great experience.

"She did a really good descent; it was also a bit sketchy because there were a lot of things from trees and small stones on the road. Maybe there was a bike in the back, but I didn't see anything in front," Brand said.

"One moment I saw a car that I thought was behind Demi, but I didn't really know until we got off. It was a straight road for a little bit, it was on her advantage again because it was up."