Tour of Britain Women: Lorena Wiebes doubles up with long-range sprint to win stage 2

No one could match Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx-Protime) as she sprinted to her second consecutive victory on stage 2 at the Tour of Britain Women on Thursday.

The overall race leader launched her sprint from 250 metres out and was largely uncontested as she crossed the line to take the win ahead of runner-up Maggie Coles-Lyster (Human Powered Health) and third-placed Kim Le Court-Pienaar (AG Insurance-Soudal Team) in Blackpool.

The lone escapee, Oda Aune Gissinger (Hitec Products-Fluid Control), was caught with 4km remaining. It was UAE Team L'IMAD that led the field into the final kilometres of the race with Liv AlUla Jayco, FDJ United-Suez and SD Worx-Protime pulling up with their lead-out trains, all gritting their teeth to hold their position on the wide-open roads.

Slightly boxed in under the 1km to go banner, Wiebes waited patiently for an opening, finding that gap with 250 metres to go, and accelerating to the line with an unrivalled sprint to take her ninth career stage win at the Tour of Britain.

Wiebes extended her lead in the overall classification to 14 seconds heading into stage 3 from Mold to The Great Orme on Friday.

The second day of the Tour of Britain Women was an 110.5km race from Clitheroe to Blackpool, featuring two categorized climbs within the first 35km. The peloton lined up under rain and cooler temperatures, a shift from the previous week's dry heatwave, and prepared for wet conditions on narrow roads.

A road blockage caused race organisers to re-route part of the race with a short deviation early on, but once back on track, it was a relatively quiet start to the stage with the peloton intact over the first ascent of Waddington Fell, a 3.3km climb with an average gradient of 6.4%, with Steffi Häberlin (SD Worx-Protime) taking the points over the top.

Katrine Aalerud (Uno-X Mobility) was alone out front as the race headed into the second ascent of the day, Nick o' Pendle, a 2.5km climb with an average gradient of 6.8%, and she held a 30-second margin over the chasing field at about 35km into the stage.

The field came to a neutralisation just before the climb after a motor accident on the course, and race organisers paused Aalerud and the peloton with 74km to go. Race officials decided not to award points over the top of Nick o' Pendle, meaning Häberlin remained the leader of the mountains classification.

Once the race got going again, several attacks across the flatter terrain caused splits in the peloton, but it wasn't until Daniela Hezinová (Picnic PostNL) cleared the field, albeit briefly, that the fireworks began in the final 40km of the race.

A mid-race crash took down Anna Morris (Great Britain), Katie Scott (DAS-Hutchinson) and Georgia Baker (Liv AlUla Jayco), but all three quickly got back on their bikes and soon rejoined the field to finish the race.

The rain continued to batter down on the peloton with 30km remaining, but the attacks kept coming with multiple surges from Pfeiffer Georgi (Picnic PostNL) and then with Oda Aune Gissinger (Hitec Products-Fluid Control) going clear. Hezinová attempted to jump across, but her efforts left her caught in no-man's-land between the leader on the road and the field.

Gissinger tucked into an aero position, smooth pedal strokes on the run-in to the final kilometres of the stage, building her lead to 30 seconds ahead of Hezinová and 50 seconds ahead of the main field.

US squad Human Powered Health did the lion's share of the pace-setting from the peloton, working for their sprinter Coles-Lyster, but other team lead-outs from AG Insurance-Soudal, SD Worx-Protime, Canyon-SRAM, and Liv AlUla Jayco quickly joined them.

The faster speeds spelled doom for Hezinová, who was caught with 11km to go, but Gissinger still clung to 30 seconds with 6km left.

It was all to play for as Gissinger looked over her shoulder to see the looming peloton coming up fast, and she was swept back into the field with 4.3km to go, resetting the race for a bunch sprint in Blackpool.

Results

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