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Huguet wins as Wood adds to World Cup lead at Flèche

Published: Apr. 21, 2004

The reigning French national women’s champion Sonia Huguet scored her first international victory at Wednesday’s Flèche Wallonne, but it was the fight for the 2004 UCI World Cup that held center stage at the hilly 97.5km event. And that brought added success to Australia’s Oenone Wood, who extended her overall lead by 20 points on Russia’s Zulfia Zabirova.

So after five of the year’s nine World Cup races, Wood has 202 points to Zabirova’s 154, while Mirjam Melchers of the Netherlands remained in third with 115 despite finishing outside the points Wednesday.

After Wood, 23, crossed the line in sixth place at the summit of the Mur de Huy, she said, “My team was just looking for the two main rivals for the overall [Zabirova and Melchers], so we weren’t too worried about letting other riders who weren’t in the top 10 get away.”

Huguet, 28, had zero points before the Flèche Wallonne so the three Australians who controlled the front group — Wood, Sara Carrigan and Olivia Gollan — didn’t chase when she escaped just before the final descent, 8km from the finish.

Huguet was joined by another scoreless rider, Germany’s Hanka Kupfernagel, and this pair took a 33-second lead into the Mur de Huy. The French champion from Lorraine proved to be the better climber and she won the race by nine seconds from Kupfernagel.

Former world champion Edita Pucinskaite of Lithuania was the fastest up the 1km, 12-percent hill to take third on the day, by two seconds from Canadian veteran Sue Palmer-Komar, with Germany’s Judith Arndt in fifth and Wood sixth.

Earlier, Canada’s Lyne Bessette and Italy’s Fabiana Luperini broke away on each of the previous two climbs. The second time, they were joined by Bessette’s Canadian rival Geneviève Jeanson, and later by Carrigan and the top American in the 152-strong field, Dede Barry. It was just after these five were caught by a chase group of 15 that Huguet made her winning counterattack.

The next race up in the women’s World Cup is Canada’s Montreal Grand Prix on May 29.