La Vuelta Femenina stage 7 LIVE: An aggressive meant the day’s breakaway took an hour to get away, but three women now lead the final stage

Markus, Markus and Lippert have extended their lead out to 1.43 as the race settles after an incredibly aggressive start.

Now the break is properly established, Markus, Markus and Lippert lead the race by 1.30.

With the leading trio 1.20 up the road Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio (AG Insurance-Soudal) attacked, but she was soon back in the pack.

Finally the breakaway is established, Markus, Markus and Lippert lead the peloton by just over one minute.

Markus, Markus and Lippert’s lead is growing. We knew Movistar were chasing and it seems the idea was to get someone up the road.

Markus and Markus continue to lead, but the chasing group has been caught and the sisters’ advantage is down to only 15 seconds.

Now more riders are trying to bridge to the leading duo, we don’t have any more details at the moment.

There’s a Movistar rider trying to chase the Markus sisters now.

Femke Markus (SD Worx-Protime) has attacked alone. This is an interesting most from Anna van der Breggen’s team. Markus began the day more than nine minutes behind her team leader.

All the jerseys are in the front group at the moment, and while the peloton has re-formed plenty of riders are dropped already. It’s going to be a very long hard day for them.

They’re flying along at the moment, the average speed remains above 50km/h. No one will get away from that.

If anyone wants to establish a breakaway they need to get away quickly as the first of those climbs comes pretty soon. The Alto de Santo Emiliano starts after 10km, it’s 5.2km and averages 5.9%. After a week’s racing this’ll be tough.

We’ve got four classified climbs, two third category, one second category and the final Especial category L’Angrilu to close the day. To add insult to injury there’s an intermediate sprint between the last two climbs.

WE have lots of attacks at the front of the race.

We head west from the start, veering north for an anti-clockwise loop, heading back on ourselves before taking a right turn to head for the final climb. It’s winds and wends and is up and down all day.

Today is the queen stage, by far the toughest day of the seven stages, at 132.8 not only is it the longest, at 132.8km, it has the most climbing, with 3,271m of elevation and finishing at the top of L’Angrilu.

The climbs come straight from the gun today, so Riejanne Markus (Lidl-Trek) is getting warmed up.

Today’s stage to the fabled climb of L’Angrilu could well bring more of the same attrition. We roll out at 10:25 local time, starting with 4.5km of neutral before getting the show on the road.

Good morning, it’s an early start for the final, race defining stage of this year’s Vuelta Femenina, so thanks for joining our live coverage.