Team News – Win for Lucy Garner

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Lucy Garner of Liv-Plantur has her first win of the season beating Wiggle Honda’s Nettie Edmondson on the opening stage of the 2015 Route de France

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Team News – Win for Lucy Garner

Liv-Plantur Press Release

Lucy Garner continued Team Liv-Plantur’s winning streak at La Route de France by winning the opening road stage today to Briare, her first win of the season. With yesterday’s prologue winner Amy Pieters finishing safely in the bunch the team successfully defended the race lead as well making it another strong day for the team in France.

LucyGarner
Photo: Wiggle Honda

The stage was on paper suiting a sprint finishing with not many difficulties to split the peloton but with the orange jersey of race leader to defend and just five riders to do it including Lucy the ladies had their work cut out to both protect the jersey and then set Lucy up for the finish. Despite this fact they were lifted by riding for the orange jersey and managed to not only help keep things together for a sprint but to get Lucy into a strong position from which she was able to sprint for the stage win.

The sprint did come down to a photo finish but the verdict was given in Lucy’s favour, just edging Annette Edmondson (Wiggle Honda Pro Cycling) into second place.

“I’m really happy to have won today – it has been a hard few months with a lot of crashes for me but the team have always believed in me,” said Lucy after her podium duties. “The girls had trust that I could finish it off today and get the win.

“They worked hard for me in the final and then Amy finished it off perfectly by bringing me to the finish after fighting for position in the in the last kilometres.

“After Amy’s win yesterday it is nice to keep the win within the team today as well. It was close on the line, I thought I had it but then as we came over the line I wasn’t so sure. So I’m really happy to get the win.”

Coach hans Timmermans added: “After a difficult spring season, this win is a nice reward for all of Lucy’s hard work in fighting back and training hard to get back into good shape.

“The stage itself was not that difficult and it was quite clear that it was going to be a bunch sprint. We helped control the race and then towards the end started to focus on the sprint preparation. The lead-out wasn’t perfect but Amy did a good job of putting Lucy into the right position at the end.

“From here Lucy finished it off perfectly. We couldn’t have asked for a better start to the race.”

Wiggle Honda Press Release – 2nd for Edmondson
Wiggle Honda Pro Cycling’s Nettie Edmondson missed out on victory by the narrowest of margins in the opening stage of the 2015 Route de France, between Avon and Briare, as she was beaten in a photofinish by Lucy Garner (Liv-Plantur). The double track World Champion crossed the line just millimetres behind the British sprinter, at the end of the shortened, 109km stage, after having been led into the finishing straight by French teammate Audrey Cordon-Ragot.

“We knew it was going to be technical, but not so technical, so it was a bit messy with a couple of kilometres to go,” Edmondson said afterwards. “Everybody thought there was still four kilometres to go, so there was a bit of miscommunication, but luckily Audrey saw me and she told me to hop on her wheel.

“I thought it was going to be a little bit too early, but all of a sudden we were at 2km to go, and because it was so technical she did a brilliant job taking me to about 500 metres to go. Then it was a little bit too early, so I had to decide whether to hit it and just go, or to use someone else’s lead out for the final 200 metres; so I chose the latter option. I reckon I went a little bit too late, in hindsight, but I managed to get second on the line, so that was pretty cool.”

“It was a photo finish,” the World Champion added. “I don’t know how close it was: I haven’t seen an arial shot. I was pretty certain that I got second, but I’m pretty good at throwing my bike – I’ve won a lot of races on the track from doing that – so I thought there might have been a slim chance that I’d got it. But I was pretty sure I got second.”

“It wasn’t very eventful. Most teams were happy with a bunch sprint,” Edmondson explained. “There were a few attacks throughout the race, but not much at all, but I didn’t mind that because it suits me. Mayuko (her teammate) attacked, but nothing got away. If she’d have got away then it would have put pressure on the other teams, which would have been good.”

With little in the way of challenging terrain, however, Hagiwara’s attempt to escape the peloton stood little chance of success on the flat roads south of Paris. French flat is different to Belgium and Holland flat,” Edmondson laughed. “It was rolling most of the day, and there were a couple of hills, but not enough to break it up.”

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