The third edition of the Women's Tour de Yorkshire will be the most open one yet, according to last year's runner-up Lucy Garner (Wiggle-High5). The previous two races have ended up in a bunch gallop, but a climb smack in the middle of the 122km route is likely to spice things up says the former double junior world champion.
As with last year, the race will follow the exact same route as the second stage of the men's race. It runs from Tadcaster to Harrogate and features the 1.7km Lofthouse climb, before an undulating ride to the finish. Last year, it seemed almost inevitable that the race would end in a bunch sprint, but Garner says that there can be no such certainty this time around.
"It's hard to say because the first part of the race is pretty flat but then you have the climb in the middle, and then it's quite rolling until the finish. I think that anything can happen, it depends on what teams want," Garner told Cyclingnews before jetting off from her base in the Netherlands to the UK. "I think it is going to split a lot on the climbs, but then it might come back. Obviously, it depends on the wind too, because over the climb it is really windy so that can also play a big part and make it split even more. It's really hard to say on a course like that."
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Garner will be one of the big home favourites, along with Boels Dolmans' Lizzie Deignan, after finishing second to Kirsten Wild in the bunch sprint into Doncaster last season. While she'd like to pull out another solid result on home turf, the course is far from ideal for Garner - who fits more into the mould of a pure sprinter – and she says that she is likely to play the support role for new Madison world champion Jolien D'hoore.
"It's a very testing the course, and my weakest point is climbing. I'm not very good at it. I try to but I'm not," Garner explained with a laugh. "[I'll try] to get over that climb as well positioned as possible and see from there. We've not had a team tactics meeting yet but I'm guessing that I'll probably be playing more of a role to support Jolien because she's probably got a better chance of getting over the climbs fresher than me.
"I think Jolien has got a good chance of getting a result because she's obviously targeted a lot of the Classics early on, so she knows that she can climb pretty well at the moment. Obviously, after the world title she's buzzing, so that's only a positive for us going into Saturday. Audrey [Cordon-Ragot] has been doing fantastic on the climbs, and she's going to want to go on the climb in the middle."
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