OVO Energy Women’s Tour 2017 Stage 2 Report – Part II

Jun 8
cyclical

Continued …

Alé Cipollini obviously fancied shaking things up today, or they were ordered to, after missing the chance to take Chloe Hosking and Marta Bastianelli to a sprint finish yesterday. The veteran Italian, world champion ten years ago and still in good form, went away in the first third of the stage, and when she was caught Anna Trevisi jumped clear.

BePink-Cogeas’ Alison Jackson got up to her to make a duo ahead, but their two-minute lead was rapidly hacked away by WM3 and Boels-Dolmans, and they were caught at Hollington.

At the finish, the announcer is trying to whip up the crowd, and as he talks Lucinda Brand’s lead is dropping all the time

The finish bends and twists up for the last 200 meters of Albion Street, up to Old Hall Street, steeper than it looks on the profile. The final bends are like a corkscrew and perfect for a power sprinter if there’s a peloton together.

The weather gives us, alternately over the last few minutes of the race, gusts of wind, heavy rain, bright glaring sunshine, light drizzle through the sun, and more wind.

All of this left the stone blocks making up the final 40 meters of the climb very slick, one final challenge after a high-speed climb.

The riders barrel into view at 75 meters to go, flying, with a Boels-Dolmans jersey on the front. It’s Amy Pieters, chased by Hannah Barnes (Canyon-SRAM) and Ellen Van Dijk (Sunweb).

Late breakaway heroine Lucinda Brand soloed up, some ninety seconds later but her rewards were the combativity prize and a maximum haul of points in the Queen of the Mountains classification.

Winanda Spoor (Lensworld-Kuota) has had a tough day out, but a strangely enjoyable one, which ended in peals of laughter by narrowly avoiding being photographed coughing her lungs up. “I like riding here. At least, when I was in the last group I could look around a bit at the nature, at all the green fields. It was really nice!

But, yeah, it was a hard day. The roads were a little risky coming down off the last QoM, really narrow and very slippery.”

Amy Pieters repeated her win on last year’s stage two, and celebrated agan, right arm thrust into the air. Speaking later she said: “It was a really hard day. After yesterday, we lost a bit for the general so our goal was to go for the stage, and I think the whole team was pretty strong today.

First, we had Christine in the front and she did a really good job … and then she came back, and we were almost all there. At the end, we talked about if it should be a sprint, so I could save myself a bit. The girls helped me really good in the final. I almost couldn’t lose it!”

Amy’s DS, Danny Stam, was quietly satisfied with the day’s work: “We knew the finish from last year actually, so we knew what we could expect a little bit.

It worked out pretty well. We were expecting that it was more stretched, the peloton, after the climbs, and actually we still presented with four riders. Actually we chose Amy for the sprint, and she finished perfect.”

“The girls are pretty open to each other about when someone has good legs and when they don’t. I mean, today, after the climbs, we discussed a little bit who feels the best for the sprint, and then the other girls say, ‘OK, we think we play Amy’, and we set up the plan for that. It is cool that they communicate in that way.”