3 Tour de Yorkshire  |  Harrogate, England  |  29 April

The perfect exhibition of team work allowed Lizzie Deignan to claim her ‘home’ race, one of the principle targets of the season. (Amusingly, she shut down one journalist later at the Women’s Tour press conference with a champion’s answer to the question about races where she particularly wanted a victory: “I want to win every race, so …”)

After three dutiful second-place finishes behind Anna van der Breggen in the Ardennes Classics, and the chaotic controversy of the missed tests in 2016, it was to be her first win in ten months.

Amy Pieters got into the early break, positioning herself as the launch pad for when her team-mates would come across. Deignan and van der Breggen powered over on the Cote de Lofthouse, and ramped up the pressure, clipping the group down to a manageable size.

Although Dani King went with Deignan and van der Breggen, and the trio ripped open a two-minute gap, it seemed inevitable that the Boels-Dolmans one-two would finish King off. Instead, Deignan decided to kill off any doubt …