The hilly stage around Schleiz had a relatively quiet start. Within ten kilometres four riders had the space to build up a lead of no less than eight minutes. In the last fifty kilometres the pace in the peloton increased. On the first long climb that followed, Henderson crashed, exactly at the moment that the peloton broke into pieces. In an attempt to bring Henderson back, the riders of the black and yellow formation missed the battle. Henderson therefore lost her top ten position in the general classification.

“A day to quickly forget”, race coach Lieselot Decroix said. “It was a very difficult stage, although we thought beforehand that this could be a stage for us. It started with a quiet run-up, but the final was tremendous. It went up and down continuously. Anna crashed just as the peloton was breaking up. That made it very difficult to come back. Karlijn and Romy tried to bring Anna back. Just as they joined in, the last difficult climb of the day started. At the front they started to race and at the back they couldn’t keep up. At that moment we were basically beaten. Luckily, the physical damage is not too bad. We’ve dropped a lot in the general classification, but we still have three days and therefore three chances to win a stage. That’s what we’re going for.”