Maria Giulia Confalonieri sprints to 8th on Stage 2 of The Women's Tour

Maria Giulia Confalonieri finished another strong team performance, leading us home 8th on stage 2 of The Women's Tour, with Marta Lach finishing just outside of the top 10.

The shortest of our 6 stages, today's route around Harlow in Essex was fast and flat, and despite the 2 QoMs coming within 20km of the finish, was certainly a day for the sprinters. Reluctant to let any breakaways form today, the World Tour teams kept tight control on the peloton with the bunch remaining together until more than halfway through the stage. Eventually, the attacks started, but the team kept their heads down and focused on the final sprint. 

Two riders managed to escape over the top of the first categorised climb and maintained a small gap of around 10" until around 3km to go, and the whole team worked hard to help make the catch and deliver Confalonieri to the finish.

With today's result, Confalonieri also retains her top 10 on GC.

Confalonieri had this to say after the stage: "Today definitely went better than yesterday, but there's still room to improve. We were lucky not to be involved in the crash with around 5km to go and we tried to do our best leadout but we were a little too far back so had to make up a lot of places which was difficult. Overall I think we're making progress and I think we'll continue to do better over the next stages".