Women's Tour: D'hoore wins stage 2

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Jolien D'hoore (Wiggle-Honda) won stage 2 of the Women's Tour into Clacton as she beat Lisa Brennauer (Velocio-SRAM) and Christine Majerus (Boels Dolmans) in a bunch sprint on Thursday.

"It was pretty close in the end," D'hoore said."I went from the last corner but it was uphill and into the wind so I didn't know if I could make it. I was hoping Giorgia Bronzini was in my wheel, in fact the original plan was for me to lead her out but she wasn't there. She told me to go from the corner and she would try and stay in the wheel so I just gave everything until the finish.

"I feel good, I'm getting stronger but I also have a good team around me and that makes a difference. You can never win a race alone. I don't know about GC but I did want to win a stage. I have that now and I can stay relaxed. Let's see how I go."

Brennauer maintained her overall race lead after finishing second in the bunch sprint for the second day in a row. She started the day in the yellow jersey because the previous day’s stage 1 winner and early race leader Lizzie Armitstead (Boels Dolmans) didn't take the start following her crash on Wednesday, which happened moments after she crossed the finish line.

"It felt quite weird for me to be wearing the yellow jersey today. I feel really sorry for what happened to Lizzie yesterday, it's never nice when somebody gets hurt in a crash," Brennauer said.

"I'm not really concentrating on my sprinting despite the two second places. I think perhaps I am just getting a better athlete. I'm not a pure sprinter and probably never will be but I can be fast especially when I get a nice lead out and the finishes on the last two days have suited me."

D’hoore is now sitting in second place overall, just one second behind Brennauer, while the day’s breakaway rider Vera Koedooder (Bigla) has moved into third place ahead of Marta Tagliaferro (Alé-Cipollini), now in fourth.

Stage 2 was the longest stage of the race at 138km from Braintree in Essex to Clacton-on-Sea, which took the peloton on the narrow and twisty roads of the surrounding countryside. Elise Delzenne (Velocio-SRAM) took the first queen of the mountain points ahead of British road champion Laura Trott (Matrix) and Melissa Hoskins (Orica-AIS) that set the stage for the first round of attacks.

Koedooder was the first rider to make a move 37km into the stage. Sarah Roy (Orica-AIS) bridged across to the lone escapee, however the pair were soon reeled in by the field. Corinna Lechner (German National Team) was the next to make a counter move but she was quickly followed by Koedooder.

The leading pair built a lead of over two minutes on the field while American rider Lauren Hall fought for a long time to try and bridge across but couldn’t quite cover the gap completely and ended up being swallowed by by the field. The US national team instead put all of their rider to the front of the field in an effort to bring the breakaway back.

Koedooder picked up full points in the two intermediate sprints but the gap to the field drastically dropped to under a minute with 20km to go. Their combined efforts to stay away came to an end in the closing kilometres, as Lechner made an attack that forced Koedooder into chase mode.

The pair reunited just in time for Koedooder to take full points at the top of the second queen of the mountains ascent, however, the peloton were only 15 seconds off of her back wheel.

Koedooer found her self alone off the front, as Lechner was reabsorbed into the field, and she pushed her gap back out to 25 seconds with 10km to go. She was eventually caught just four kilometres from the finish line.

The sprinters’ teams organizers their lead-out trains with Wiggle-Honda expecting to support Giorgia Bronzini for the stage but the women lost one another’s wheels in the finale and D’hoore ended up taking the win.

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