Jolanda Neff gets off to her usual good start in Cairns and immediately puts pressure on the competition. Britain's Annie Last briefly takes the lead and accelerates, but the Lenzerheide winner immediately realizes that Neff has no trouble staying on her back wheel. Neff goes past and on lap two, Last can no longer stand up to the elegant and powerful kick of the St. Gallen rider.

The Kross rider runs circles around the front and when Pauline Ferrand Prevot, who starts a chase to catch up and is partially faster than Neff, has to stop at the technical zone due to a defect, there is nothing that can stop her from riding in one piece anyway.

Jolanda Neff takes the rainbow jersey in the elite for the first time after three U23 titles. And this after a first half of the season in which she had to put up with a lot of criticism. Her studies, which she began a year ago, did not allow her to achieve the results she was used to. And she ruined her own chances at the European Championships with a training crash.

The consequences are still not completely healed in Cairns, but there is no sign of it on this day in the dry Queensland heat.
"I have no words, I'm just happy," she says with emotion in her voice. "We had a perfect plan. It was important to be at the front at the beginning, that worked out great and I just had to stay in front," explains Neff.

After all the difficulties this season, triggered by the start of her studies in the fall, she is now well practiced "in hurdling", says Neff. "It's just great that I was able to find my top form at the end of the season. I know that it didn't work out at the highlights the last two years, but there were always good reasons for this that I knew. I knew that I could be fast when everything was right."

Second best Swiss is Corina Gantenbein. She rides the race of her life and makes up places lap after lap. She starts from 25th position and rides great lap times, especially in the second half of the race.

"I can still improve at the start," she says with a laugh at the finish. By then, the cramps in her legs, which set in just as she was sprinting for seventh place with Canadian Emily Batty, had already subsided. "That was a shame, but I'm mega happy with my race," she says and her beaming face is actually comment enough.

Linda Indergand is in second position at the start, but on lap two she falls heavily on her face, bleeds from her nose and only continues to ride because she doesn't want a DNF after her name. In the end, she finishes one lap down in 40th place.

Complete ranking list elite women:

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