The Women's Tour: Lorena Wiebes wins stage 4

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Lorena Wiebes (Team DSM) has won stage 4 of The Women's Tour. The 22-year-old Dutch sprinter was fastest to the finish line in a seaside sprint in Southend-on-Sea, beating Chiara Consonni (Valcar-Travel & Service) and Chloe Hosking (Trek-Segafredo) to win her first Women's Tour stage.

“The win means a lot,” said Wiebes. “We really went for this win.  Pfeiffer Georgi was really close at stage 2 so I’m really happy for the team that we took it today.”

Overall leader Demi Vollering (Team SD Worx) finished with the peloton and defended her blue leader's jersey with a 1:09 margin over runner-up Juliette Labous (Team DSM) and 1:19 over third placed Clara Copponi (FDJ Nouvelle-Aquitaine Futuroscope).

“My team stayed on the front and really controlled it,” said Vollering, “So that was nice. A lot of other teams wanted to sprint here so we were not the only ones who wanted to keep together so that was a bit more easy for us.”

How it unfolded

After the stage 3 individual time trial, The Women’s Tour moved to East Anglia for the second half of the race. Stage 4 started in Shoeburyness and finished in Southend-on-Sea after 117.8 kilometres, including a long loop on the Dengie peninsula. Due to the flat terrain and the relatively calm wind, a mass sprint was the expected outcome.

The stage was raced at a high speed, with 40km covered in the first hour of racing, meaning that none of the early breakaway attempts were successful. Janneke Ensing (Team BikeExchange) eventually got away and took the points and bonus seconds at the first intermediate sprint in Burnham-on-Crouch after 50km.

She was 15 seconds ahead of the peloton at that point and, a few kilometres later, decided to save her strength and let herself be caught. The next rider to break away was Lourdes Oyarbide (Movistar Team), followed by Anna Christian (Drops-Le Col s/b Tempur) trying to bridge across to the Spaniard.

Oyarbide held an advantage of up to 1:05 minutes over the peloton with 46km to go, Christian trailing her by 40 seconds. The Manxwoman was caught soon after, and as Oyarbide was only 34 seconds ahead at the 40-kilometre mark, she also decided to sit up and wait for the peloton.

Wiebes won the second intermediate sprint in Woodham Ferrers ahead of Amy Pieters (Team SD Worx), who moved within one second of Clara Copponi (FDJ Nouvelle-Aquitaine Futuroscope) due to the bonus seconds on offer, and Nina Kessler (Team TIBCO-Silicon Valley Bank) who defended the red sprint jersey.

There were numerous attacks, including on the classified Hambro Hill where Elise Chabbey (Canyon-SRAM) took maximum points to defend her green QOM jersey, but the sprinters teams kept the peloton together as it neared Southend-on-Sea.

In the sprint up the Western Esplanade, Wiebes launched late and sped past Consonni on the final 100 metres to win the stage. In Wiebes’ slipstream, Hosking came up fast on the final metres, but Consonni held on to the runner-up place.