Armitstead delights home crowds but Wild wins women’s Tour de Yorkshire

Lizzie Armitstead’s homecoming in the Women’s Tour de Yorkshire could have been more straightforward, with a variety of mechanical problems meaning she endured a tough race from her home town of Otley to the railway stronghold of Doncaster, where victory went to the Dutchwoman Kirsten Wild. What truly mattered was that the crowds saw what they wanted: the world champion unleashed in the final kilometres, resplendent in her rainbow stripes, doing her damndest to provide the perfect ending to a day the organisers will probably want to forget.

No British world road race champion, of either sex, has enjoyed such a showcase event on home roads and Armitstead did not disappoint. Unfortunately, television viewers were unable to witness the event due to issues with the relay aeroplane, which lessened its impact somewhat, but she was effusive in her comments about its significance.

“I had to have a little gulp in the neutralised zone,” she said of the start in Otley. “There was incredible support, on every corner in every town. It was very, very special and this race will automatically grow. The women’s peloton will see how good it is now, it will be on their agenda and the bigger teams will come.”

Armitstead had to switch to a spare bike early on when her handlebars came loose as she went over a pothole – “I thought I was going to go through a wall” – and her opponents got wind of her troubles and piled on the pressure. Having changed to a winter bike with heavy wheels she had to switch back to her race bike, after all of which her race was under threat, she conceded.

“Luckily, [her GB team-mate] Emma Pooley realised, she dropped back and got me to within 50m of the peloton. There was a tailwind so we were doing 50km per hour within metres of the bunch but we couldn’t get to them. We got on eventually, but then I hit another pothole and the bars went loose again.”

For the first time in her career, she said, Armitstead ended up having her bars adjusted on the move with a team mechanic hanging out of the car, and when she regained contact she decided to put on the pressure on the climb of Conisbrough Castle.

“I got a fantastic lead-out from [team-mate] Evie Richards. I was really impressed with her and the other girls. They were strong, enthusiastic and constantly asking what they could do to help me. So I put in a little dig and got away.”

Armitstead and her two companions, Leah Kirchmann and Doris Schweizer, gained more than a minute at one point late on, but their fate was sealed when they turned northwards for the final brief run-in to Doncaster after a loop south of the town and hit a headwind.

The move was, she said, precisely what was required of her on the day: a television attack, as she put it, using the semi-ironic term for a move that is made largely to garner publicity, with the twist being that there was no footage for anyone to see.

Armitstead now takes a two-and-a-half week break from competition before returning in the Holland Hills Classic for the beginning of the final run-in to Rio that will take in the Aviva Women’s Tour in the UK from 15-19 June.

Gender parity was upheld when the men’s race was barely more visible to television viewers than the women’s as the issues with the transmission plane continued in the afternoon. The script was pretty much the same as well, with a mass sprint up South Parade going to another Dutch cyclist, in this case Team Sky’s Danny van Poppel.

The Lotto NL-Jumbo team took control in the final few kilometres after the Orica-GreenEdge outfit of the Settle runner-up Caleb Ewan had made the running and initially their lead-out for the race leader Dylan Groenewegen looked solid.

However, the final roundabout shuffled the pack, with Ewan balked by one of the Lotto lead-out men as he began his final effort and it was Van Poppel who surged at precisely the right moment, coming to the left of OnePro’s Chris Opie in the final metres, rubbing elbows briefly with the Cornishman and holding off a fast-finishing Groenewegen.

Having started the Tour de France at the precocious age of 19, Van Poppel broke through with a stage win in last year’s Tour of Spain before signing for Team Sky this year. He is the latest scion of a distinguished Dutch cycling family, with his father, Jean-Paul, a dominant sprinter in the Tour de France in the 1980s and his elder brother Boy a solid presence at the Trek-Segafredo team. On Sunday, however, with six stiff climbs in the North York Moors, he is unlikely to retain his lead and with 80-odd riders close behind the race remains up for grabs.