Just like the day before, Charlotte Kool (dsm-firmenich PostNL) failed to threaten Lorena Wiebes and her SD Worx-Protime team in the final stages of the RideLondon Classique. Still Cool was still upbeat about her performance in the three-day race, comfortably beating everyone else to take her second runner-up in a row.

"I think it was actually a good weekend. For example, I felt a lot better than the Vuelta, so I think I'm getting there, so I'm going in the right direction," Cool said after the stage.

Like Wiebes, Kool was also mostly involved in the crash on 8 3/1 laps, and the 25-year-old especially thanked his teammates for avoiding any subsequent trouble.1

"It was pretty chaotic. It was kind of a crash, I was standing still and clicked a bit, so it was a bit of a shock that I survived, to be honest. But we came back really quickly. And Daniek [Hengeveld] did a great job keeping us all safe, I was really impressed with what she did. 

"In the sprint, I think it's fair enough, yeah, because they came really fast from behind," Cool said.

She could not repeat the stage and overall victory in 2023, but Weave wiped out all 3 stages to join her class and Cool enjoyed the stage in the British capital.

"It's always really special. There's not much you can do to race in the middle of the city of London," she said.

In each of the 3 stages, the lead-out from world champion Lotte Kopecky was an important part of Wiebes's victory, but the last sprint was a work of art

In departure from the usual arrangement, Kopecky was sitting in the 3km in the 7th row of peloton and riding himself, while Wiebes was riding Barbara. On the wheels of Guarischi was moving further forward.

In flamme rouge, the star sprinter stayed through the turn to Spur Road as Guarischi took the Wiebes to the rear wheel of Kool and Guarischi took the internal lane and moved to the second position of the wheel of Gasparrini.

Guarischi then jumped on a turn to the mall to take the lead at less than 400 meters to go, and at the same time Kopecky also took the inner lane to get in front of Wiebes, without spending more energy than necessary.

The World champion immediately started her lead-out from fifth place, passing Cool at the 200-meter mark and allowing Weaver to go after her while still in Kopecky's slipstream. When Wiebes started his own sprint, Kool had already made the first kick, and the rider who lost Rachele Barbieri from the front group before the stage had no answer. That's why Vives won the sprint for 3 consecutive years.

"We missed her because everything looked really good until we lost Rachel in the lead-out," dsm・firmenich PostNL coach Kelvin Decker said in a team statement. "I think we can also see that in the last 500 meters it was a small push that we really missed to fight for victory. 

"We did as good a job as possible and I think Charlotte did a good sprint, but we just missed it a little bit, so we're 2nd on 2nd in the GC. We know what to work on and build on this.”