Armitstead wins Aviva Women's Tour

Lizzie Armitstead (Boels-Dolmans) sealed overall victory at the Aviva Women’s Tour while Lotta Lepistö (Cervelo-Bigla) won the sprint from the breakaway group to claim the stage honours on the final day in Kettering.

The race was animated by a seven-woman break that saw Molly Weaver (Liv-Plantur) spend much of the stage as the virtual yellow jersey before the combined efforts of Armitstead’s Boels-Dolmans squad and Marianne Vos’ Rabo-Liv teammates brought the move under control, though not fully to heel.

Weaver had Lepistö, Marta Bastianelli (Ale Cipollini), Elena Cecchini (Canyon-SRAM), Lauren Kitchen (Hitec Products), Eugenia Bujak (BTC City Ljubljana) and Janneke Ensing (Parkhotel Valkenburg Continental Team) for company in the move, which went clear after 30 kilometres.

Loren Rowney (Orica-AIS) had originally been part of the break but she was distanced on the climb of Newnham Hill, where the leaders began to stretch out their advantage over the peloton.

The gap never quite nudged beyond five minutes, however, and the peloton began to peg back the move in the second half of the stage. Yet though the deficit stood at barely more than a minute entering the final 20 kilometres, the escapees managed to stay clear all the way to the finish in Kettering.

"It was a hard start to the stage," Lepistö said. "We were defending Ashleigh’s second place on the overall. A group was going away so I was covering the attack. Eventually we got a good gap and we were happy with the names in the group so I got the team orders to work. When the gap got too big and was threatening GC, the team orders were for me to stop working.

"I thought we would be caught in the last kilometre because the gap was coming down all the time,” Lepistö said. “The team told me to look for a spot to attack in order to increase the gap for the break because we didn’t want the peloton to catch us as there were bonus seconds on the line. I tried a few times and couldn’t get away so I decided to save my legs for the sprint. Molly Weaver attacked with 600m to go, I got on her wheel and opened up my sprint with 200m to go."

After a late attack from Kitchen was closed down, it was clear that the escapees would fight out for the stage honours in a group sprint, and Lepistö delivered a pitch-perfect finishing effort to see off Bastianelli and Cecchini.

Armitstead finished safely at the head of the main peloton to seal final overall victory, 11 seconds clear of Lepistö’s Cervelo-Bigla teammate Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio, while Elisa Longo Borghini (Wiggle-High5) finished third, a further two seconds back. Marianne Vos, winner the previous day, finished the Aviva Women’s Tour in fourth overall, 18 seconds behind Armitstead.

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