At the occasion of the last race of the UCI World Cup ladies, velowire.com offers you a summary of this race in Brittany which took place today.

This afternoon in Plouay the Grand Prix de Plouay Bretagne took place and was part of the UCI World Cup ladies.

Despite a solo raid by Emma Pooley (Team Garmin-Cervélo), winner in 2009 and 2010, Annemiek van Vleuten won this race thanks to a remarkable job of her team mate Marianne Vos.

The summary of the Grand Prix de Plouay Bretagne - ladies

The Grand Prix de Plouay Bretagne ladies took place on the same 19.1 kilometer long circuit as the Grand Prix de Plouay tomorrow. You can find the race course of this circuit on Google Maps in the article The race course of the Classic de l'Indre and of the Grand Prix de Plouay 2011 on Google Maps / Google Earth.

6 laps gave a total distance of 114.6 kilometers and in the second lap Evelyn Stevens (Team HTC-Highroad) and Sharon Laws (Team Garmin-Cervélo) decided to attack. They got company from Erinne Willock (Tibco-To the top) at the second crossing of the finish line and at that time the new leading trio had a 33 seconds lead on the peloton led by Tiffany Cromwell (Hitec Products-UCK).

In the 3rd lap on the circuit, the leading group got bigger with Emma Pooley (Team Garmin-Cervélo) and Annemiek van Vleuten (Nederland Bloeit), leading the UCI World Cup, joining them. When they crossed the finish line, their gap on the first peloton was 38 seconds while numerous riders were lagging behind in a peloton which completely fell apart. Their gap quickly went up, up to 1'50" in the 4th lap when Elizabeth Armitstead (Team Garmin-Cervélo) tried to get away from the peloton, without success.

From the peloton we than saw an attack by the Dutch Marianne Vos, team mate at Nederland Bloeit of Annemiek van Vleuten, but at about 30 kilometers from the finish, Emma Pooley, who already won this race in 2009 and 2010, started a solo race from the leading group. The group is than composed of 11 elements, including Marianne Vos, Emma Johansson (Hitec Products-UCK) and Judith Arndt (Team HTC-Highroad).

In order to prevent Emma Pooley from taking a 3rd consecutive victory in this race, Marianne Vos started chasing but she had to cope with heavy wind. Back in a small leading group with Annemiek van Vleuten, Chantal Blaak (AA Drink-Leontien.nl), Erinne Willock and Evelyn Stevens, Vos continued the work at the head of this group and the gap went down to 32 seconds at the start of the last lap. It continued to go down rather quickly thanks to Vos' heavy work and at 5 kilometers from the finish Vos brought the group back to Pooley. Stevens immediately attacked but Van Vleuten didn't hesitate to respond to this attack and to get over the American rider in the last kilometer to win the race alone ahead of the others.

The Dutch rider thus took a double win because, already leading the UCI World Cup, she thus won this classification with 362 points, 47 more than her team mate Marianne Vos. Emma Johansson ended 3rd in this classification.

In Plouay, Evelyn Stevens took the second place, 3 seconds behind Van Vleuten while Marianne Vos won the sprint with Chantal Blaak at 46 seconds. Vos thus completed the party for Jeroen Blijlevens, directeur sportif of the Nederland Bloeit team.

The classification of the Grand Prix de Plouay Bretagne - ladies

Here's the top 10 of the Grand Prix de Plouay Bretagne :
1/ Annemiek van Vleuten (Nederland Bloeit) - 3h12'28"
2/ Evelyn Stevens (Team HTC-Highroad) - +0'03"
3/ Marianne Vos (Nederland Bloeit) - +0'46"
4/ Chantal Blaak (AA Drink-Leontien.nl)
5/ Erinne Willock (Tibco-To the top) - +0'49"
6/ Emma Pooley (Team Garmin-Cervélo) - +1'06"
7/ Judith Arndt (Team HTC-Highroad) - +5'45"
8/ Joelle Numainville (Tibco-To the top)
9/ Rasa Leleivyte (Vaiano Solaristech)
10/ Emma Johansson (Hitec Products-UCK)

The final classification of the UCI World Cup ladies

Here's the top 5 of the final classification of the UCI World Cup ladies:

1/ Annemiek van Vleuten (Nederland Bloeit) - 362 points
2/ Marianne Vos (Nederland Bloeit) - 315 points
3/ Emma Johansson (Hitec Products-UCK) - 223 points
4/ Judith Arndt (Team HTC-Highroad) - 184 points
5/ Ina Teutenberg (Team HTC-Highroad) - 143 points

>> Check out the photos of the Grand Prix de Plouay Bretagne - ladies

Interviews (video) with Annemiek van Vleuten, Marianne Vos and Jeroen Blijlevens will be published later ...

door Thomas Vergouwen
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this publication is published in: Grand Prix de Plouay | Women's cycling

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