Lorena Wiebes wins Harlow stage of The Women's Tour
Stage Two took place in the town today
Last updated 7th Jun 2022
The Women's Tour continued in Essex today, with stage two taking place in Harlow.
Second Stage - Tuesday
Day two saw riders setting off from Harlow Innovation Park at 11am, before completing a 57.3 mile ride to finish on Third Avenue, back in Harlow.
The route took riders north east through Hatfield Heath to Great Dunmow for the opening intermediate sprint of the stage, and on through Felsted, High Easter (location of the second intermediate sprint), and Roxwell.
The event coincided with the town's 75th birthday, and is part of celebrations for the occasion.
Dutchwoman, Lorena Wiebes, from Team DSM, won stage two of this year’s tour.
Wiebes, who won back-to-back stages of last year’s race, comfortably took the victory along Third Avenue after an impressively-timed lead-out by her team-mates.
In the fight for second, Movistar Team’s Barbara Guarischi pipped Canyon//SRAM Racing rider Shari Bossuyt to the line.
Stage one winner Clara Copponi placed sixth and retained her overall lead.
First Stage - Monday
The first stage of the tour took place yesterday, with riders setting off from Colchester Sports Park, before completing a 142km ride to Bury St Edmunds.
Frenchwoman Clara Copponi claimed the first victory of her road racing career as she sprinted to win the opening stage in Suffolk yesterday.
The FDJ Nouvelle-Aquitaine Futuroscope rider pipped Italian duo Sofia Bertizzolo (UAE Team ADQ) and Elena Cecchini (Team SD Worx) to the line in a reduced bunch sprint after a final-kilometre crash removed pre-stage favourite Lorena Wiebes (Team DSM) out of contention.
Copponi, a reigning world champion on the track, claimed the first yellow leader’s jersey of this year’s race as a result of her victory.
Road Closures
The Women’s Tour operates a rolling road closure system, as opposed to a full road closure, to minimise disruption as much as possible.
Roads along the stage route will only be closed for a short window – approximately 30 minutes – while the race passes through.
Click here for the latest on today's road closures.
The Riders
This year’s race will feature 97 riders across 17 teams, including 13 of the 14 UCI Women’s WorldTour squads.
Among the field will be a pair of former winners: Coryn Labecki (Team Jumbo – Visma) and Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon//SRAM Racing). The latter is once again eyeing victory, having won the 2017 edition and finished second two years later.
Fellow Briton Lizzie Holden (Le Col – Wahoo) is preparing for her third edition of the Women’s Tour, having also raced in the virtual ŠKODA V-Women’s Tour edition held during the first lockdown.
Heading to the Women’s Tour in good form is Team BikeExchange – Jayco rider Alexandra Manley, who won four stages and the overall of the Lotto Thüringen Ladies Tour in Germany last week.
Also lining up will be a number of distinctive jerseys, with European road race champion Ellen van Dijk (Trek – Segafredo) joining the national road race champions of Britain (Pfeiffer Georgi, Team DSM), Israel (Omer Shapira, EF Education – TIBCO – SVB), Italy (Elisa Longo Borghini, Trek – Segafredo), Canada (Alison Jackson, Liv Racing Xstra); Czech Republic (Tereza Neumanova, Liv Racing Xstra) and Austria (Kathrin Schweinberger, CERATIZIT – WNT Pro Cycling).
The international competition then leaves the East for the year, heading to Tewkesbury for Stage 3.