Marianne Vos (Rabo-Liv) took a morale-boosting victory on what was a thrilling finale to the penultimate stage of the Aviva Women’s Tour. The image of the finishing stretch in the race’s road book belied what truly awaited the riders at the finish and it’s steepness surprised most. Vos had the measure of it, though, jumping in the final metres to take the win by a clear margin.
Leah Kirchmann (Liv Plantur) followed her over for second with Emma Johansson (Wiggle-High5) in third place. Race leader Lizzie Armitstead (Boels Dolmans) finished in sixth and extended her lead in the overall classification after taking bonus seconds in both intermediate sprints.
It had looked like it could be a repeat performance of stage 3 as Armitstead went away with Elisa Longo Borghini (Wiggle-High5) and Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio (Cervelo-Bigla) on the second climb of the day. Already a commanding force, the trio were soon joined by Johansson at the head of the race.
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Frustrated by the lack of work from the Wiggle-High5 pair, Armitstead began setting a blistering pace on the front before launching a speculative attack. Behind, the group had split up, but a set of 12 riders began to organise a chase, including Vos and Lisa Brennauer, and the advantage of the leaders never breached the 20-second mark.
Vos had lost Anna Van Der Breggen to a major crash with just under 30 kilometres remaining as they approached the first categorised climb, but Rabo Liv still had strength in numbers. They amassed at the front along with Canyon-SRAM and began pegging the gap back, which was little more than 10 seconds with 10 kilometres to go.
The four escapees were tantalisingly close to the line but with dissent in the ranks they couldn’t delay the inevitable, and the group was brought back with less than half a kilometre to the line.
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