British cyclist April Tacey of Drops Cycling and Scottish-born Freddy Ovett of Israel Start-Up Nation were the respective winners of the women’s and men’s races yesterday at the Virtual Tour de France, with four of the six stages now completed.
Yesterday’s course on Zwift covered two laps of a 22.9 kilometre circuit designed to reflect the landscape of south west France, complete with fields of sunflowers, with Jossy Lowden of Drops Cycling, wearing the polka-dot jersey, taking the day’s first two climbs and using a feather power-up to move past her rivals on the last ascent of the day.
Tibco-Silicon Valley Bank, who retain the overall lead on 277 points ahead of Drops Cycling on 219 points and Canyon//Sram Racing with 206 points, pushed hard on the descent and secured third and fourth place through Lauren Stephens and Leah Dixon.
Tacey’s victory, ahead of with Team Sunweb’s Anna Henderson, was the second stage win for the 19-year-old from Leicester, who took the opening stage last weekend.
In the men’s race, Daniel Turek of Israel Start-Up Nation took maximum points on the first two KOMs to help defend team-mate Ovett’s polka-dot jersey.
Trek-Segafredo’s Ryan Mullen made a solo attack inside the last 20 kilometres but was chased down by NTT Pro Cycling, who were looking to set up yellow jersey wearer Michael Valgren for the stage win.
The Dane looked well positioned to take victory in the sprint but had to be content with third as Ovett – born in Dumfries but an Australian citizen, and the son of two-time Olympic gold medal-winning middle-distance runner, Steve Ovett – came through and edged out Mitchelton-Scott’s Nick Schultz for the win.
NTT Pro Cycling continue to top the overall standings with 263 points, while Rally Cycling are second on 188 points and Trek-Segafredo third with 162 points.
The Virtual Tour de France concludes next weekend with a stage to Chalet Reynard on Mont Ventoux on Saturday followed by six laps of the iconic Champs-Elysées circuit in Paris on Sunday.
There will also be the final chance to ride a Virtual l’Étape du Tour de France, with 16 sessions next weekend of a 22.9-kilometre route tasking in Mont Ventoux, with the finish at the observatory at the top of the fabled mountain.
Unleaded? I thought you ran old bangers classic cars?
is this actually a new article or updated as written at the top...or has road.cc finally learnt how to use the reset comments button......ha ha
Great news, now perhaps they can move the bike stuff to the ground floor and relegate the car stuff to the mezzanine to highlight the change in...
They've brought it in after realising it should have been done years ago.
Haha, easy pee. Might I suggest EZP as a new marketing acronym for the next big revolution in cycling tights? That said, I can definitely relate,...
Yeah...good.......
That was shocking. I have tried to think of why any driver would do that and there is no possible reason that I can think of. It was one of the...
The ones that really confuse me are the ones who do the picking up and only then leaving the bag.
In a no drugs world Armstrong would have won it once and it would have looked like it was killing him like Cadel Evans.
Then the police would have been there sooner so the reading would have been higher. Not sure where you are going with this one.