Van Dijk wins stage two and takes the overall lead

The Ladies Tour of Qatar was turned on its head on stage two as an ominous show of strength by the HTC-Highroad team gave Ellen Van Dijk stage victory and the overall lead. Van Dijk outlasted Australian champion Alexis Rhodes (Garmin-Cervélo) in a thrilling sprint finish in Lusail, after a breakaway of almost 70km that contained three riders each from HTC-Highroad and Garmin-Cervélo, as well as Dutch champion Loes Guinnewijk (Nederland Bloeit).

At the finish, the leaders had a two-minute margin over a main group containing golden jersey Rochelle Gilmore (Lotto-Honda), World Champion Giorgia Bronzini and Nicole Cook (MCipollini-Giordana). Van Dijk now leads her teammate Charlotte Becker by 15 seconds on the overall classification.

The pair united with their HTC-Columbia teammates Chloe Hoskings and Adrian Visser to take full advantage of the high winds and exposed roads that marked the stage to spark a decisive echelon after 36km. They were soon joined by Guinnewijk and Garmin-Cervélo's Rhodes, Trine Schmidt and Iris Slappendel, and although Hoskings was forced out of the breakaway soon afterwards with mechanical trouble, the remaining HTC-Columbia riders expertly controlled the finale for Van Dijk.

"The girls helped me in the intermediate sprints to take seconds and then in the finale they were perfect, they kept the group together for me so I could sprint," Van Dijk said afterwards.

The Dutchwoman also explained that the windy conditions were ideally suited to her talents and that after a conservative first stage, she and her teammates were keen to split the field.

"Yesterday we couldn't really do anything because there wasn't too much wind," she said. "I was really happy this morning to see that there was this much wind and I knew that we could make the difference today."

A slow start

After leaving from the splendour of the Islamic Museum of Art, the peloton snaked its way out of Doha and into the barren flatlands north of the capital. In the opening section of the stage, the bunch raced square into a block headwind and the pace was accordingly sedate, with just 26.6km covered in the first hour of racing.

Against the stiff wind, which intermittently shifted sands into the eyes of the peloton, understandably few riders were keen to escape early on, but the aggressive Valentina Bastianelli (Vaiano Solaritech) was an exception. The Italian made a brave solo move 14km into the stage, following on the back of her attempted escape on stage one.

Bastianelli built up a maximum lead of a minute, but riding against the breeze, on a deceptively false flat and on a long, straight road that appeared to stretch on for eternity, hers was a thankless task and she was swallowed up a little over 10km later as the Dutch team wound up the pace behind.

The turning point of the stage was to come soon afterward. In the run-in to the first intermediate sprint, a slight change in wind direction allied to a crash in the bunch wreaked havoc on the race, and HTC-Highroad and Garmin-Cervélo were quick to seize the initiative. Nicole Cooke was among the riders who made the initial selection, but under increased impetus from the HTC-Highroad quartet of Hoskings, Becker, Visser and Van Dijk, she was sent back to a chaotic second group.

When the dust settled, the HTC riders were left at the front with Garmin-Cervélo's Rhodes, Schmidt and Slappendel, as well as Loes Guinnewijk, and they immediately found a common cause and worked fluidly together.

By the first sprint, taken by Van Dijk ahead of Visser and Slappendel, they already had 45 seconds over a 30-rider group that contained the golden jersey of Rochelle Gilmore. Even after Chloe Hoskings was forced out of the break with mechanical trouble, their lead continued to grow and would do so all the way to the finishing circuit at Lusail.

At the second sprint, HTC-Highroad swept up all of the bonus seconds, with Van Dijk leading Visser and Becker over the line, and the momentum was increasingly with the seven up front. Entering the first of two laps of the Lusail circuit, their lead was at two minutes, and that increased to 2:55 by the time they came around for the bell with 11km to go.

Behind, it was the MCipollini-Giordana team of Nicole Cooke and Monia Baccaille that took up the burden of chasing down the leaders, and they would succeed in trimming the margin to 2:02 at the finish line, but it was too little too late, and the final overall victory now appears destined to go to one of the day's escapees.

At the head of the race, Trine Schmidt attempted to jump clear 5km from the line, but she was tightly marked by HTC-Columbia's Adriana Visser, and in the closing kilometres both Garmin and HTC focused on setting up the race for their fastest finishers.

In the finishing straight, Van Dijk opted to open her sprint from distance and in spite of Alexis Rhodes' rally in the final 100 metres, the Dutchwoman had enough left in the legs to take the stage and the lead in all of the classifications. Ahead of tomorrow's final stage, she has 15 seconds over her teammate Becker, while Garmin-Cervélo's Slappendel is six seconds further behind in third.

However, with just 16 seconds of bonuses up for grabs on the final stage to the Doha Corniche, the race is very much in HTC-Highroad's hands.