Lizzie Armitstead (Boels-Dolmans) sealed overall victory at the Aviva Women’s Tour while Lotta Lepistö (Cervelo-Bigla) won the sprint from the breakaway group to claim the stage honours on the final day in Kettering.
The race was animated by a seven-woman break that saw Molly Weaver (Liv-Plantur) spend much of the stage as the virtual yellow jersey before the combined efforts of Armitstead’s Boels-Dolmans squad and Marianne Vos’ Rabo-Liv teammates brought the move under control, though not fully to heel.
Weaver had Lepistö, Marta Bastianelli (Ale Cipollini), Elena Cecchini (Canyon-SRAM), Lauren Kitchen (Hitec Products), Eugenia Bujak (BTC City Ljubljana) and Janneke Ensing (Parkhotel Valkenburg Continental Team) for company in the move, which went clear after 30 kilometres.
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Loren Rowney (Orica-AIS) had originally been part of the break but she was distanced on the climb of Newnham Hill, where the leaders began to stretch out their advantage over the peloton.
The gap never quite nudged beyond five minutes, however, and the peloton began to peg back the move in the second half of the stage. Yet though the deficit stood at barely more than a minute entering the final 20 kilometres, the escapees managed to stay clear all the way to the finish in Kettering.
"It was a hard start to the stage," Lepistö said. "We were defending Ashleigh’s second place on the overall. A group was going away so I was covering the attack. Eventually we got a good gap and we were happy with the names in the group so I got the team orders to work. When the gap got too big and was threatening GC, the team orders were for me to stop working.
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