Grace Brown: "We thought that we were safe" after losing GC by one second in Women's Tour

Grace Brown lost the Women's Tour lead in the closing meters of Saturday's stage after finishing outside the top ten in the crucial group sprint in Oxford. Elisa Longo Borghini, Brown's major general classification challenger, stormed to third in the stage, collecting four bonus seconds to win the overall by one second.

“We thought that we were pretty safe for the final as long as there were no gaps but it was really messy, Trek did an amazing lead-out to put Elisa in a really good position ahead of the corners. That had her there to sprint for third, which we really didn’t expect. I knew that the finish was technical and that I had to be in a good position because when there are all those corners it would be really messy, I wasn’t just sitting up and rolling to the finish. Elisa made the most of it though,” she said.

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Brown had jumped into the race lead on stage four after she took an unexpected win, but couldn't manage to hold onto the lead on the final day as Borghini's bonifications at the finish line saw her eliminate the gap between both.

“There’s still a consolation for me in terms of the rest of the race, I knew that coming into today it was close and there was a chance that I wouldn’t finish the day with the jersey, so I was already happy with the Women’s Tour. When I got the sprint seconds I thought that maybe I had it already, and then to lose it was disappointing but overall I’m very happy with the week,” she concluded. She secured the second position in GC after stage 6 only one second behind the Italian.