Cervelo's Claudia Häusler takes overall victory at Emakumeen Bira

by Jered Gruber at 4:34 PM EST

Thrilling final stage shakes up overall standings

Coming into the final stage of the Emakumeen Bira in the Basque Country, Cervelo TestTeam's Claudia Häusler sat a mere 12 seconds back of race leader and defending champion, HTC-Columbia's Judith Arndt.

Three and a half hours later and Häusler had catapulted from twelve seconds down to over four minutes up. The extremely difficult final stage, a 126 km loop around Orduna, included four big climbs and would prove to be the race's most demanding day.

Dutchwoman Annemiek Van Vleuten of the Netherland Bloeit team took top honors in fine solo fashion in Orduna. Cervelo's Claudia Häusler, came in 46 seconds later in second place, with more than enough time to take the overall win.

Cervelo sports director, Egon van Kessel, describes the stage: "Today's last stage was a very hard stage, the hardest one all week, but a very nice stage for us. There were lots of mountains and 40 km from the finish line there was a moment, I know it was fairly early, when Claudia tried to attack, and she dropped Judith Arndt on the climb."

From there, Häusler bridged across to two Dutch riders, Annemiek Van Vleuten and Andrea Bosman. The leading trio cooperated to perfection and put big time into a non-cooperative chasing quartet of Marianne Vos, Emma Johansson, Judith Arndt, and Vicki Whitelaw.

Häusler was a happy winner following the race: "We said this morning we go for all or nothing. We wanted to win this race, and so we had to take some risks. There were two girls in front, van Vleute and Bosman, and I decided to give it everything on the climb, and then I had a gap. So, I went full gas, and I was able to join them in the front. We worked very well together, though it was still a long way to the finish line. At the end, the gap was pretty big. Annemiek van Vleuten won the stage, and I had enough time to win the classification for the race."

Häusler has her sights set on Italy's top race next: "This race was important in my preparation for the Giro d'Italia. But this is also a big race, the biggest stage race in Spain. I have to say thanks to my team, all the riders worked really hard for me in the last day and did a fantastic job.

Results
1 Annemiek Van Vleuten (Ned) Nederland Bloeit 3:31:51
2 Claudia Hausler (Ger) Cervelo TestTeam 0:00:46
3 Andrea Bosman (Ned) Netherlands 0:01:39
4 Marianne Vos (Ned) Nederland Bloeit 0:04:56
5 Eleonora Patuzzo (Ita) Safi - Pasta Zara 0:05:29

Final General Classification
1 Claudia Hausler (Ger) Cervelo TestTeam 11:26:58
2 Annemiek Van Vleuten (Ned) Nederland Bloeit 0:01:20
3 Judith Arndt (Ger) HTC Columbia Women 0:04:35
4 Marianne Vos (Ned) Nederland Bloeit 0:05:55
5 Emma Johansson (Swe) Redsun Cycling Team 0:06:41

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