Jolien D’Hoore won stage two of the Women’s Tour on Thursday, the Belgian coming through a bunch sprint to triumph on the Braintree to Clacton-on-Sea route.
D’Hoore finished ahead of Lisa Brennauer, of Velocio-SRAM, who maintaining her overall race lead, a position she held going into stage two because Lizzie Armitstead is out of action following her crash while celebrating winning stage one on Wednesday.
With this victory D’Hoore is second in the general classification and only one second behind Brennauer, with Thursday’s breakaway rider Vera Koedooder moving into third place.
Stage two saw the peloton navigate a narrow and twisting 138km route through countryside and it was at the 37km mark that Koedooder, riding for Bigla, made her move. Sarah Roy, of Orica-AIS, followed but the pair were soon pulled back into the pack.
Koedooder and the German National Team rider Corinna Lechner formed a new lead pair and eventually found themselves a whole two minutes ahead of the rest of the field. But with about 20km to go the gap between the leading pair and the pack shortened to less than a minute. They then split, reuniting in time for Koedooder to take full points at the top of the second queen of the mountain ascent, with Élise Delzenne, of Velocio-SRAM, taking the first queen of the mountain points earlier in the race, ahead of the British road champion Laura Trott.
Koedooder pulled away again but was caught 4km from the finish line. There was a frantic finale and it was D’Hoore, of Wiggle-Honda, who was victorious.
Friday’s stage three is from Oundle to Kettering.
