Women's Tour de Yorkshire: Lorena Wiebes wins stage 1

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Lorena Wiebes (Parkhotel Valkenberg) won the first stage of the Women's Tour de Yorkshire, dominating the sprint after the break of the stage was caught with three kilometres remaining.

Wiebes, who finished second in last month’s Gent-Wevelgem In Flanders Fields race, ensured she was on the wheel of Christine Majerus (Boels-Dolmans) and when her Dutch compatriot hit out early, she waited before launching her own sprint with two hundred metres to go. Majerus finished second, with Canada's Alison Jackson (Team Tibco-SVB) was third.

Thanks to winning the sprint, 20-year-old Wiebes also took the race leader’s blue jersey. She and her Parkhotel Valkenberg will now try to defend her lead on Saturday’s second and final 132km stage from Bridlington to Scarborough.

"My teammates did as really good job in bringing me up to the front, then Demi (Vollering) put me in a perfect position, so I was behind Majerus, and then I waited until 200 metres or something and then just went," she explained.

"I felt good during the stage. Now I hope we can swap the race leadership in the team, my teammates are better climbers than me."

The 132km stage from Barnsley to Bedale started in the rain, with Letizia Paternoster (Trek-Segafredo) a non-starter due to illness.

Despite a number of attacks the peloton stayed together for the first hour and the first intermediate in Pontefract, with the break of the day only forming soon after thanks to a strong attack by local rider Lizzie Banks (Bigla). She was joined by Leah Dixon (Brother UK Tifosi) and they opened a two-minute lead, with Banks the first to the Cote de Lindley climb after 69km to take the red Queen of the mountains jersey.

As the race reached Harrogate for a lap of the world championship circuit, the two were joined Kelly Murphy (Storey Racing), Ingrid Lorvik (Hitec Products) and Maria Giulia Confalonieri (Valcar Cylance) and they fought hard to stay away in the rain.

With 55km to go, their gap was down to a minute but they refused to give in and forced the major teams to work hard behind.

Lizzie Deignan (Trek-Segafredo) made a strong attack with 22km to go and others did the same, bringing the gap to below a minute but the breakaway fought on and was only swept up with three kilometres to go after an organised chase by Parkhotel Valkenburg and then Mitchelton-Scott.

Trek-Segafredo and then Canyon Sram tried to lead out the sprint before Boels-Dolmans and then ultimately Wiebes took over.

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