Elsy Jacobs

Communiqué de presse

Former Polish champion Marta Lach made it three consecutive wins at Festival Elsy Jacobs, winning the Course à Garnich on Saturday. Lach won both the Garnich and Luxembourg races at Festival Elsy Jacobs in 2024, also winning a stage when the event was a multi-day race back in 2019, so knew the roads very well.

The SDWorx-Protime ride took the perfect line on the sprint finish to win by no more than a tyre’s width, ahead of Maria-Giulia Confalonieri (UNO-X Mobility), with Sarah Van Dam (Ceratizit) in third place.

“It was close actually, I won by maybe 2cm, but I won in the end,” Lach said at the finish line. “It was actually a hard race, really punchy but we did good team tactics and in the end it worked out. »

Earlier in Saturday’s race she had been part of a short, two woman breakaway with Swiss team mate, Steffi Häberlin on the penultimate lap round the finish village of Garnich, in the West of Luxembourg. Then, when that was caught, she escaped again with four other women deep inside the final 10km. Despite working hard in that group and leading into the final few hundred metres, she rode cleverly, ensuring she took the win.

“You have to be smart,” she continued. “We passed the finish line eight times so I knew exactly where is the moment to go and also which line I should take, I was in the front so I just did my line and I was not giving up, I’m the sprinter and I knew it’s up to me to arrive to the finish and I just wanted to win for our team and it worked out.”

The 112.4km race took in four long, then four more shorter laps, each starting and finishing in Garnich. The pace was high throughout the day. For some time it seemed as though a large group would last until the finish, but attacks on the short, steep climb around half way around the circuit soon split the peloton, and it was on that climb that the winning move finally went.

Sunday will see a second day of racing, with the 121.6km Course à Luxembourg, starting and finishing in the city suburb of Cessange.

Martina Fidanza wins in Luxembourg at the Festival Elsy Jacobs

Italian rider Martina Fidanza took the first victory of her 2025 season at the Festival Elsy Jacobs Course á Luxembourg on Sunday. The 25 year-old took advantage of excellent work from her Visma Lease-a-Bike team mates to sprint to victory ahead of Valentine Fortin (Cofidis) and Barbara Guarischi (SD Worx-Protime).

“I feel good, because yesterday it was not really my day, I was feeling not so good” Fidanza said after the podium ceremony. “Today I had completely different feelings and also we worked really good with the team and I think we deserved this victory.”

The race took place over eight laps of a 15.2km circuit in Cessange, on the south western edge of the city of Luxembourg, with two hills proving the decisive attacking point. After an aggressive performance on Saturday’s Course á Garnich, Fidanza’s Dutch Visma-Lease-a-Bike team managed only fifth place, but dominated Sunday’s race in Cessange, where their aggressive tactics paid off.

The team had Margot Vigié in an early attack on the day’s first classified climb, before Eva van Agt escaped in a small breakaway. Then a large group of 11 riders formed with two of the squad’s women present, before yet another bridged across.

Fidanza herself made it to the front when the leading group was caught by the peloton, and remained with them when the race split once again shortly afterwards.

“Today we wanted to make the race hard and also to give an opportunity to all my team mates to feel free to do their own races,” Fidanza explained. “When it was one or two laps to go we decided to go for the sprint because I was still there and because we knew today it was completely different from Saturday, so we decided to go for the sprint in the small bunch.

“I decided to start my sprint really far from the finish and when I saw that no one could pass me I was more motivated in the final.”

Owen Rogers

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