Columbia-HTC's Villumsen Seizes Lead in Tour of Thuringen

A courageous solo attack earned Columbia-HTC's Linda Villumsen both the stage win and the lead in the Thuringen Rundfahrt in Germany on Thursday. The Danish rider took off in heavy rainfall during the final hour's racing for an impressive lone victory
in the 130-kilometre Rund um Schleiz stage.

"Linda did brilliantly.  The bunch caught up with her once, but she just broke away again and kept going right to the finish," said team manager Petra Rossner.  "She first went about 35 kilometres from the line, and that didn't work out.  After that, she managed to go clear and had an advantage of about 24 seconds for quite some
time.  Then the gap suddenly lifted to 40 seconds and we realised she could move into the overall lead as well.  The situation was very good for us because we had Kim [Anderson] and Luise [Keller] in the chase group behind. That made the other teams hesitate.  So we kept on yelling 'go,go,go' to Linda form the team car and she finally made it to the finish line alone."

Rossner said later that Villumsen's victory was particularly pleasing because the team had been in the thick of the action for the first two days races, but had not taken any wins.

"We've been in the breaks, looking for success, and it hadn't worked out.  So we had a team meeting this morning and decided we'd continue attacking regardless."
Rossner said Villumsen's first challenge as race leader will come on Friday, with a 23-kilometre time trial in Treibes.

"First she has to recover from today's big effort, and then we'll see what happens. But in any case, this was an amazing victory."

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