Ladies Tour of Norway: Wiebes wins stage 1

Lorena Wiebes (Parkhotel Valkenburg) has won stage 1 of the Ladies Tour of Norway that was raced in pouring rain, also taking the overall classification lead, along with the points and young rider leads. The Dutch champion won the stage ahead of Chloe Hosking (Alé Cipollini) and Amalie Dideriksen (Boels Dolmans).

With 30km to go, Team Sunweb put the race in the gutter and forced a split in a crosswind section, with the second peloton ending up almost four minutes down.

Three laps of the finishing circuit in Horten were dominated by incessant attacks, but in the end, the stage came down to a sprint.

A crash just inside the three-kilometre mark took out Coryn Rivera (Team Sunweb), among others.

On the finishing straight, Hosking opened up the sprint and Wiebes came from behind and had to take the longer line. She won with more than a bike length on Hosking, with Dideriksen  finishing third.

How it happened

For this year's opening stage, the Ladies Tour of Norway moved west of the Oslofjord for the first time. Starting at the house of Edvard Munch in Åsgårdstrand, the peloton faced 128km through Vestfold, ending with a finishing circuit in Horten.

There were some attacks early on, with Norwegian Julie Solvang (Hitec Products-Birk Sport) especially active, but no breakaway could establish itself. The peloton briefly split on the two classified climbs, but things quickly came back together again.

Anastasia Chursina (BTC City Ljubljana) made a move at the 50-kilometre mark and established an advantage of 26 seconds, but she was reeled in again with 42km to go. This started a phase with numerous tries to get away. Racing into a headwind, the attackers were at a disadvantage, and the race stayed together until a left turn towards the finishing town with 32km to go.

With the wind now coming from the side, Team Sunweb massed at the front and increased the pace, and gaps quickly opened up in the peloton. Eventually, the front group grew to a peloton of just over forty riders while the remaining riders continually lost ground.

On the finishing circuit, many teams tried to send riders up the road. Small groups got a gap and were caught again almost continuously, keeping the pace high. Floortje Mackaij (Team Sunweb), Ruth Winder (Trek-Segafredo), Christine Majerus (Boels Dolmans), Marta Lach (CCC-Liv), and Hannah Barnes (Canyon-SRAM) attacked with 13 km to go and formed the most promising move, later joined by Aude Biannic (Movistar Team).

Their advantage was never more than a few seconds, though, and they were caught just before the start of the final lap of 7.6 kilometres. After the counterattacks were shut down at the five-kilometre mark, it was clear the stage would end in a sprint.

Team Sunweb lined up at the front, but Juliette Labous slid on a wet patch in a sharp corner with 2.4km to go, taking down her teammate Franziska Koch and holding up Marianne Vos (CCC-Liv). Anna Henderson (Tibco-SVB) also crashed, taking down Coryn Rivera.

When riders had come back together after the crash, Lach took charge of the lead-out on the final kilometre. Hosking started her sprint early but was no match to Wiebes' acceleration on the final metres.

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