It's quite pleasing actually when you look at things now that by and large these Unipuerto stages are no longer being as decisive, and the stages with the biggest time gaps tend to be those which are going up and down a lot more frequently. It augurs well for better mountain stages in future, as per that chart that Saul brought out a couple of years ago showing that multi-mountain stages were almost non-existent in women's cycling. Of course, it's possible that with the time gaps generated on stage 3, Annemiek didn't feel the need to completely blow it up from the bottom like she did on Laghi di Cancano a few years ago, since she only really needed to pay attention to García and Cavalli, but nevertheless, she did try attacking, as did Mavi, and the time gaps between the top 10-12 (excluding Juliette who was in the break) were not so big - around 90 seconds between van Vleuten and Magnaldi, as opposed to around 5 minutes on Monday.
Similarly, in the Ceratizit Challenge last year, a lot of riders were able to get to around 90" from Annemiek in the MTT, but in the ensuing stage with lots of up and down but not that much 'real' climbing, Annemiek won by three minutes and 10th place was over 7 minutes down, much more like the Cesena stage. Again at Norefjell in the Tour of Norway, 23 riders within 2 minutes, 10th place at +1'12, similar at Lagunas de Neila, (bigger gaps this year than in 2021, despite or perhaps because of the weaker field). The SD Worx annihilation at the Giro last year show that there are still cases where the single climb being attacked from the base can be absolutely destructive in women's cycling, but if we stand more chance of variety in the mountain stages and fewer hockeystick profiles in the near future, that's great news.