The American climber Megan Guarnier clinched overall victory on the top of the Cow and Calf climb here in the first two-day women’s Tour de Yorkshire. Her win continued a dominant spring for the Dutch Boels-Dolmans squad who rode like the top team in the world even with Lizzie Deignan sidelined from racing through pregnancy and this spring’s prolific winner Anna van der Breggen remaining at home in the Netherlands .
The reason for their success was obvious as a 14-woman lead group tackled the final kilometres up the Wharfe Valley through Pool and Otley: just as when Deignan won last year’s one-day race in Harrogate, Boels’s teamwork was impeccably disciplined, with each of their three riders in the decisive attack playing her role to perfection to deliver Guarnier the win on her 33rd birthday.
“All my team-mates said I should give myself a good present today and I knew I had to finish off their hard work,” she said after the 124km stage. The New Yorker added after the finish that her first win of the season was welcome but there was a little more to it than that.
Her2017 produced three World Tour wins but was marred by two heavy crashes, the first of which in late February left her with concussion, while the second – on a descent in the world road championships in Oslo – resulted in a broken jaw and displacement. As this season started she was still wearing a mouth guard in bed to ward off spasms and was not at ease when eating.
Behind Guarnier Dani Rowe came within reach of a home win, finishing third on the stage behind Canyon-SRAM’s Belarussian Alena Amialiusik, but winding up 17sec behind Guarnier in second place in the overall standings, thanks to her haul of bonus seconds on stage one into Doncaster. Fresh from her bronze for Wales in the Commonwealth Games, she heads for a well-earned mid-season break.
Still a relative novice in road racing at this level, Rowe continues her impressive progress following her move from the track, where she can boast six gold medals – one Olympic, three world and two European – in the team pursuit. Unlike Guarnier she had to play a solo hand – rather than her trade team WaowDeals she was riding here with a young Great Britain team, who had been blown away in the final kilometres – but she gauged her effort with impressive precision.
As expected, the Doncaster winner Kirsten Wild did not figure in the final moves but, when she slipped backwards on Old Pool Bank, the rider in the blue leader’s jersey had already played the team role she predicted she would, winning the opening sprint to deprive Elisa Longo-Borghini’s rivals of a potential time bonus before leading the peloton into the climb to set up the Italian’s attack.
Boels’s team ethic was exemplified by their Canadian Karol-Ann Canuel and the world champion Chantal Blaak, both of whom worked hard to keep the 14-rider lead group clear after the split had been forced by Wiggle-High5 over the climb of Old Pool Bank, a straight, steep drag out of Pool in Wharfedale with 17.5km remaining. It was classic teamwork, enabling Guarnier to keep her powder dry.
Canuel had done the bulk of the work up the valley and it was Blaak who set the pace on the early phase of the climb out of Ilkley on to the moorland below the distinctive millstone grit outcrop and boulder which have lent their name to the pub near the finish line. For a world champion to do such menial work is not unprecedented but she had figured in an exploratory five-rider move that went clear as the race passed Harewood House on the outskirts of Leeds, and which began the final sort-out.
That underlined Boels’s absolute adherence to their plan, the final phase of which was Guarnier’s acceleration with 500m remaining to the line picked out next to a slope still covered in last winter’s dead bracken. The Cow and Calf is short compared to the ascents she conquered en route to victory in the 2016 women’s Giro d’Italia but it was enough for her to open a decisive gap, with Amialiusik responding initially but slipping slowly back.
Rowe took the opposite approach, keeping a controlled pace initially and producing her effort late to close on the Belarussian. “I really targeted this race, so I didn’t have a break after the Commonwealth Games,” she said afterwards.
“I know my body is more for sprinting so if I force it into the red I just blow. I knew how long the climb was and I couldn’t follow Megan, she’s a phenomenal climber while I am just learning the ropes. I could see Alena in front, and I knew I had to keep pushing to the line because I had those time bonus seconds in hand.”
In the men’s event a few hours later Magnus Cort Nielsen made light of the gradient to produce a searing sprint finish to take the stage and the leader’s blue jersey, continuing a recent run of success for the Astana team.
The Dane hung fire until the final metres, when his effort proved too much for the Olympic champion Greg Van Avermaet, Spaniard Eduard Prades and the 2017 winner, Serge Pauwels. The quartet are separated by just 10 seconds, leaving the race finely poised before two hilly stages over the weekend.
