Boels Ladies Tour: Wiebes gets a second win on stage 2

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Lorena Wiebes (Parkhotel Valkenburg) took her second consecutive stage win at the Boels Ladies Tour, sprinting to the stage 2 victory in Gennep. Well-positioned through the technical final kilometre, Wiebes opened her sprint along the 500-metre straight shot to the finish line beating her Dutch compatriots Kirsten Wild (WNT-Rotor) and Lucinda Brand (Sunweb).

Wiebes’ victory offered her enough time bonuses to move into the overall lead, taking the orange leader’s jersey off the back of Annemiek van Vleuten (Mitchelton-Scott). Van Vleuten now trails Wiebes by seven seconds while Brand is in third place at eight seconds back.

How it unfolded

The second stage of the Boels Ladies Tour offered a 113km route in Gennep. The race was held on four laps of a 29km circuit and there were two sprints for points and one time bonus sprint at the end of the second lap (55km).

Van Vleuten, who won the prologue, started the stage wearing the orange leader’s jersey. She held only a slim three-second lead in the general classification over stage 1 winner Wiebes and an additional second to Letizia Paternoster (Trek-Segafredo).

Quinty Thon (BiehlerPro) was the first to launch an attack in the opening kilometre, clearing the field and pushing her lead out to nearly a minute inside the first 10km of the stage. With Thon more than a minute down in the overall classification, the peloton initially seemed content to let her have some leeway.

However, Boels Dolmans and Canyon-SRAM moved their riders forward, pulling back the gap to a more manageable 30 seconds. Not satisfied with the gap ahead of a pending sprint for points, the two teams further reduced the gap to 15 seconds and then shut it down completely with 90km to go.

Kirsten Wild (WNT-Rotor) won the sprint for points ahead of Alison Jackson (Tibco-SVB) at the start of the second lap.The overall classification contenders, not interested in points, were focused on the next intermediate sprint for time bonuses at the start of the third lap. There were 3, 2, and 1 seconds on offer. Lisa Brennauer (WNT-Rotor) picked up the full three seconds ahead of Lucinda Brand (Sunweb) and Christine Majerus (Boels Dolmans).

Despite a crash at the start of lap third, the peloton remained intact through gusty winds and pouring rain to complete the final two laps. The peloton remained all together as the riders orbited the penultimate lap.

Wild sprinted for the full points at the start of the final lap, once again beating Jackson to the line.

As soon as the peloton entered the final lap, a breakaway formed that included world champion Anna van der Breggen (Boels Dolmans) along with Lizzie Diegnan and Elisa Longo Borghini (both Trek-Segafredo). Van der Breggen was only nine second down in the overall classification and so the peloton did not allow the decisive move to gain a significant gap and they were brought back into the fold with 25km to go.

Mitchelton-Scott’s Gracie Elvin put in one attack within the final 15km, likely to take some pressure off of her teammate and overall leader Van Vleuten, who had crashed the previous day and injured her wrist. The move didn’t last long, however, and she was brought back with 10km to go.

The teams with strong sprinters ensured another a bunch sprint. The peloton intact, the women raced into the final technical kilometre in Gennep, a perfect final for Wiebes to take her second consecutive victory.