Rivera wins Women’s Tour as Dani Rowe pedals through pain to clinch third

After Dani Rowe’s horrendous crash close to the finish in Worcester on Saturday the suspense hanging over the grand finale to the OVO Energy Women’s Tour was less whether Team Sunweb and Coryn Rivera would maintain their stranglehold on the lead – which, to their credit, they did – or who would win the stage, which Lotta Lepistö did in a blanket finish that should mark a turning point for the Finnish sprinter in a season marred by illness.

Rather the big doubt was whether Rowe would survive the north Wales hills and hang on to third place overall despite being barely able to lift her left leg over her bike the previous evening.

It would have been no massive surprise – or great dishonour – to see Rowe in the broom wagon along with the stage one winner, Jolien D’hoore of Belgium, another crash victim, but she clung on, not giving in on her adopted home’s roads, although it was a close run thing.

She was left behind by the field on the first categorised climb of the day and had to be helped back to the front by a teammate, visited the race doctor as she rode for painkillers and feared she would be dropped as the 53 leaders fought for position on the windswept run to the finish.

“I’ve never suffered so much in a race,” Rowe said afterwards. “I knew the second Queen of the Mountains climb wasn’t as steep as the first” – the Nant Gwynant ascent in the heart of Snowdonia was two and a half miles long, however – “so I just tried to conserve my energy. After that I got more confident I would be there at the finish but when we hit the sea [front] with four kilometres to go, there was a lot of gutter action. Normally I’d just surf the wheels but I was struggling.”

Afterwards she pointed to her left leg, massively swollen around the knee. She had been assured there were no fractures or ligament damage but there was so much swelling it was apparently hard to tell the extent of the damage.

For Rowe, assuming she could stay with the field, holding on to her podium position also depended on whether her personal rivals, Christine Majerus or Amy Pieters, gained any time bonuses during the stage but in the event Majerus gained only one second, after which it was a matter of hanging on and hoping the race stayed together.

Rowe’s personal battle came down to a few seconds as did Rivera’s for her first Women’s World Tour stage-race win, with Marianne Vos 11sec behind overall at the close. Rivera is only 25, but she has a plethora of major wins to her name, headlined by last year’s Tour of Flanders, the Alfredo Binda Trophy and Prudential Ride London, and she has a host of US national titles too; the American had begun the race with a strategy of targeting the bonus seconds on offer at stage finishes and intermediate sprints and she snaffled them up each day with ease.

Rivera and the Dutch team Sunweb had taken a strong grip on the overall standings when she won stage two in Daventry from Vos, and their grip on proceedings was demonstrated as they left Snowdonia for the coast when the race leader took her place in a five-rider lead group together with last year’s winner, Kasia Niewiadoma, the Queen of the Mountains, Elisa Longo-Borghini, and Pieters.

Rivera had a teammate in the quintet in Lucinda Brand, emphasising Sunweb’s domination. “Everyone had made out at the start of the week that there was this huge mountain [today] but, when it came down to it, it wasn’t so hard.”

This was a tense five days at high speed, with an average on Sunday’s 75 miles just short of 25mph in spite of all the climbing. After five editions the OVO Energy Women’s Tour has gone through its teething pains and is now well established, but more days of racing are required to enable it to visit new areas and have a more adventurous route, with perhaps a summit finish, some truly tough climbs or an individual time trial, to ensure greater drama and to take the race towards maturity.