Judith Arndt has taken over as race leader in the Giro della Toscana - Memorial Michela Fanini in Italy on Wednesday whilst Ina-Yoko Teutenberg cruised to a strong lone stage win in the same race.

Arndt took the lead on the first sector of Wednesday’s stage, a 57.2 kilometre run from Porcari to Montecarlo won by Marianne Vos of Holland.

Then Ina Teutenberg soloed home to victory on the second sector from Pontedera to Altopascio, whilst Arndt kept a firm grip on the number one spot in the overall classification.

“I got the lead on the final climb,  one this race covers every year, when Vos and [Italian] Noemi Cantele attacked.” Arndt said later. “The bunch was all together and then at the bottom it was chaos, as always. Vos went away on a conner and I went with her, getting the lead.”

“Then in the afternoon’s stage we missed the first break of the day and it was a bit dangerous because [American contender Kristin] Armstrong was in the group.”
“We had to bridge a rider across when we got closer to the break, but when Ina did that I could sit in behind.”

Asked if she will go all out to keep her lead, Arndt said “It’s difficult not to. You know the World’s are coming but at the same time you get drawn into the racing, you want to defend the leader’s jersey 100 percent.”

“So I’ll take it on the day by day, although tomorrow [Thursday] is the hardest and most mountainous stage of the race. On top of that Luise [Keller, talented climber with Columbia] crashed today and although she’s not out of the race, she was injured.”

Teutenberg’s victory on the second sector came in spectacular style after a 12 kilometre chase ended with the German winning by a scant 10 seconds.

“It was close.” Teutenberg admitted. “We missed the early break and although that wasn’t a huge problem on such a short stage, we had to work hard to pull it back.”

“Then I jumped across to the front group and then got away with 12 kilometres left to race. The gap went up to 20 seconds almost immediately after I attacked, then it went up to 35 seconds but it started coming back down again.”

“I felt pretty confident I’d won in the last kilometre, but it was a dangerous run-in and you never know for sure that you’ve done it until you cross the line.”