After two consecutive fifth places, Cat Ferguson (Movistar) won stage 3 of the Tour of Britain Women, beating Josie Nelson (Picnic PostNL) and Ally Wollaston (FDJ-Suez) in the sprint of five riders on the wet cobbles of Kelso.
Ferguson launched her sprint with 150 metres to go and held off a surge from Nelson to take her first Women's WorldTour victory.
Due to the time bonification for the stage win, Ferguson also takes the overall lead ahead of Wollaston who is three seconds behind, setting up an exciting final stage in Glasgow.
Ferguson and Nelson had followed an attack by Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig (Canyon-SRAM zondacrypto) on the last climb of the day with 25km to go, and Karlijn Swinkels, Eleonora Gasparrini (both UAE Team ADQ), and Wollaston bridged to them before the top.
Uttrup Ludwig dropped out of the group with a mechanical, leaving five frontrunners for the last 20km. They held off the chase group of 17 riders by 38 seconds, and although Gasparrini lost contact at the 2km mark, she came back again and took the lead as they crossed the River Tweed on the final kilometre.
"I'm over the moon. This was one of the races I was most excited to do this season, and I really wanted to come here in good form and show Britain how good I can be, and I think I proved that today," said Ferguson after the finish.
"It's really emotional, even talking about it now. It's so lovely to have my family here, and it really is a team win, the team really supported me, and I feel so lucky to have them," she continued.
"We worked well together as a group, and I knew that if I positioned myself well into that final corner, I could probably win the sprint. It was useful that we'd done it before, in the intermediate sprint. I knew it was better to be second wheel and then launch first because you lose some momentum on the cobbles, and it's hard to build it back up. So I didn't look back and just kept going," the 19-year-old described the sprint.
"I'm a little bit nervous now, to be honest, it's going to be a rough night's sleep, I think. I really want to hold on to this jersey that I didn't think I would be in, so we have to look and make a plan to hold on to it for tomorrow. We'll see how it goes around the streets of Glasgow, I've raced there before, and we've got a strong and motivated team. We'll do our best to defend it," Ferguson said about the upcoming final stage.
How it unfolded
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Starting and finishing in Kelso, the stage consisted of a longer and a shorter loop around the Scottish Borders for a distance of 143.8 km. The longer loop included the climbs of Scott's View, Dingleton, and Dunion Hill, with the first two being climbed again on the shorter loop.
The peloton stayed together over the first ascent of Scott's View, with Dominika Włodarczyk (UAE Team ADQ) taking maximum QOM points. Overnight leader Kristen Faulkner (EF Education) suffered a mechanical and changed to the bike of her teammate Babette van der Wolff.
Amber Kraak (FDJ-Suez) attacked on the Dingleton climb, cresting it a few seconds ahead of the chasing peloton but was caught a couple of kilometres later. After a flurry of unsuccessful attacks, the pace dropped again, allowing Faulkner and other dropped riders to return.
It started to rain heavily as the stage went on, and Włodarczyk was first at the top again which made her the leader of the QOM classification when Mara Roldan (Picnic PostNL) crashed out of the race.
This happened on a wet descent with 56km to go. Roldan was in third position going into a right-hand turn but slipped and crashed, immediately followed by dozens of other riders including Faulkner, Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx-Protime), and Kim Le Court (AG Insurance-Soudal).
The race had split completely because of the mass crash, and it took a while before riders came back to form a peloton of just over riders. Wollaston won the intermediate sprint in Kelso ahead of Ferguson and Célia Gery (FDJ-Suez), but the descent saw another crash where, among others, Faulkner went to the ground again. She had to switch one of her shoes afterwards and was on the back foot from there on, eventually finishing over three minutes behind and dropping out of the GC race.
Up front, Uttrup Ludwig attacked on the second ascent of Dingleton, initiating the decisive move. Unfortunately for the Dane, she lost contact with the other five due to her mechanical, and the last 20km were a long-range chase between the frontrunners and the next group on the road – with the front group going all the way to the finish where Ferguson won the sprint.
Lukas Knöfler started working in cycling communications in 2013 and has seen the inside of the scene from many angles. Having worked as press officer for teams and races and written for several online and print publications, he has been Cyclingnews’ Women’s WorldTour correspondent since 2018.
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