Lizzie Deignan wins GP de Plouay

Image 1 of 25

Lizzie Deignan (Trek-Segafredo) claimed a record third victory in the GP de Plouay when she beat her fellow Briton Lizzy Banks (Équipe Paule Ka) in a two-up sprint at the end of a rain-sodden race in Brittany.

Chiara Consonni (Valcar - Travel & Service) won the bunch sprint for third ahead of Marta Bastianelli (Alé BTC Ljubljana), a little over a minute down on Deignan and Banks.

Banks and Deignan had a winning gap on their pursuers by the time they hit the final climb of the Côte du Pont-Neuf. Deignan looked comfortable, leading most of the way up the ascent, and the former world champion then calmly manoeuvred Banks to the front to lead out the sprint.

How it happened

It was an early start for the Women’s WorldTour peloton, and though the 101.1 km race began in the dry, it soon started raining. Swiss Lara Krähemann (Cogeas Mettler Look) went on a solo escape on the initial 46.5 km loop, but when the race crossed the finish line for the first time to tackle four laps of the finishing circuit, she had been caught again.

Swiss champion Marlen Reusser (Équipe Paule Ka) kept a high pace in the peloton on the first of the three laps. At the start of the antepenultimate lap, Reusser attacked herself, but was quickly reeled in again.

A mass crash on the wet and narrow roads held up last year’s winner Anna van der Breggen (Boels-Dolmans), world champion Annemiek van Vleuten (Mitchelton-Scott), and newly-crowned Spanish champion Margarita Victoria García (Alé BTC Ljubljana), among others.

Soon after, Banks triggered the winning move when she attacked with 35km to go. She was quickly joined by Deignan and Jip van den Bos (Boels-Dolmans). However, the Dutchwoman crashed out of the break almost immediately when she misjudged a turn on the wet roads, leaving Deignan and Banks alone at the head of the race.

The two Britons combined smoothly, and they quickly established a lead of a minute over a group of ten chasers that had formed on the Côte du Lézot, 25 km from the finish.

With one lap of the 13.6-kilometer circuit remaining, Deignan and Banks still had 43 seconds in hand on the chase group, though their lead was briefly threatened by some fierce accelerations from Annemiek van Vleuten (Mitchelton-Scott).

It was a short-lived rally from the world champion, however, and when she dropped to the rear of the group, Deignan and Banks’ advantage rose again, with Elisa Longo Borghini (Trek-Segafredo) and Mikayla Harvey (Équipe Paule Ka) helping to police the chase group. Eventually, the chasers stopped their efforts to catch the front duo and were themselves joined by the peloton six kilometers from the line.