Vos seals overall World Cup with Plouay victory

Olympic champion Marianne Vos (Rabobank) showed her form has not waned since London by putting in an impressive solo effort to win the final World Cup round, the GP Plouay, and seal her overall victory in the series.

Behind Vos, Tiffany Cromwell (Orica-AIS) took second over Elisa Longo Borghini (Hitec Products).

Vos won the overall World Cup by a huge margin over Judith Arndt (Orica-AIS), with American Evelyn Stevens (Specialized-lululemon) in third. Her win in France also served to push Rabobank into the top spot of the teams classification over Orica-AIS. 

"With a strong Marianne Vos and Annemiek van Vleuten, who won the World Cup last year, I knew that we had to be able to compete for the final win in the team classification," said Rabo director Jeroen Blijlevens. "We won last year as well with Nederland Bloeit, but this is nearly an entirely new team. We had to wait and see how things would turn out. Therefore I'm really proud that we managed this year as well to write the team classification to our name."

Vos had already secure the individual classification after last week's World Cup in Sweden, but still went for the victory for the team.

"The team classification was most important today," Vos said. "I wasn't feeling really super and Pauline Ferrand-Prevot was having difficulties as well, so it was a bit exciting to see if we could manage. In the beginning of the season we had not anticipated that we would easily win it in our first year. But the team has been really doing well since the start of the season. Not only during World Cup races, but actually we are a team to be reckoned with for all races."

Vos had to come back from a flat tire earlier in the race, but she returned to the peloton in time for aggression from multiple teams to whittle down the lead peloton to 34 riders.

On the second to last lap, a brisk pace on the climb further reduced the leading group to 10, from which Orica-Ais rider Tiffany Cromwell attacked.

She was joined by Longo Borghini before Vos herself decided to make the bridge alone.

"Vos attacked us on the last climb, and I had nothing left," said Cromwell. "She rode away from us but never got too much of a gap. I attacked Elisa on a small rise at 1.5 kilometers and got a gap on her. I held it to the finish to comfortably finish second."

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