Vos wins Ladies Tour of Norway as Guarnier takes final stage

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Marianne Vos (WM3) finished third on the final stage of the Ladies Tour of Norway on Sunday, securing the overall win, while Boels Dolmans' Megan Guarnier won the day. Ellen van Dijk (Team Sunweb) was second.

While Vos used the stage to secure her overall win, Guarnier relied  on a time bonus at the finish to move up the general classification from fourth to second. Van Dijk maintained her third-place spot in the overall.

"The team tried the whole week for intermediate sprints because we knew it would come down to seconds," Guarnier said. "I'm glad that work paid off in a small way. It was nice to have Christine [Majerus] on the podium in stage one. As always, we stayed motivated in the race, and I'm happy we could take the top step on the final stage and get on the general classification podium. It really was a team effort."

The final and longest stage of the four-day race took the peloton over 156.6km from Svinesund to Halden. Although the pace was high and the field aggressive during the first half of the race, no escape was able to gain more than 10 seconds or stay away for more than a handful of kilometres. Twice the peloton split, but each time the groups came back together.

A group of three that included Daiva Tuslaite (Alé Cipollini), Ingrid Moe (Norway) and Lisen Hockings (Australia) finally snapped the elastic 80km into the day, building a gap of three minutes before the field started chasing in earnest. A mechanical knocked Tuslaite out of the breakaway, while Moe couldn't stick with the pace set by Hockings, who entered the finishing circuits on her own with a gap of just over a minute.

Rachel Neylan (Orica-Scott) jumped across the gap to Hockings and eventual dropped the Australian rider, setting off on her own solo move. Hockings was eventually brought back into the fold before Vos jumped, bringing along six more riders and forming a new lead group that also included Guarnier. The much-reduced peloton bridged to the move, setting up a barrage of final attacks that were not able to stick.

In the end, Van Dijk launched her move from nearly 500 metres out, while Guarnier sat on her wheel and took the lead as they sailed through the final corner. Guanrier hung on for the win, with Van Dijk and Vos just behind.

"It was a hard stage," Guarnier said. "I wouldn't say I completely rule myself out as a sprinter, but I'm definitely not a bunch sprinter. That kind of hectic is not something I look forward to.

"We stayed on our toes, and we tried to make sure we were ready and offensive in the final laps," she said. "Ideally it wouldn't come down to a sprint, but it was a reduced bunch sprint in the end."

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