Ronde van Drenthe: Lorena Wiebes takes strong win

Team DSM have gathered their second win of the season as Lorena Wiebes is continuing her strong run of form to conquer the Ronde van Drenthe. The 155-kilometer long race was harshly attacked over the several cobbled sectors and final circuit around the VAM-berg ascent, but it came down to a bunch sprint where the Dutch took the win.

Despite the best efforts of the likes of Ellen van Dijk and Riejanne Markus, the race didn't prove itself hard enough to prevent a sprint at the end, with Trek and DSM connecting the groups in favour of their fast women. Trek - Segafredo led the sprint towards the end but Lorena Wiebes took the lead in the final meters at the sprint and overcame Elisa Balsamo for the win, with Lotte Kopecky finishing third.

Wiebes said in a post race interview: "Today we showed again that we have a really strong team. Megan, Fanzi and Leah did a really good job with positioning us for the difficult moments, despite some bad luck. All of the time we were in the front for the VAM-berg and reacted on the attacks which was really good.

"Before the VAM-berg for the last time I had a flat but was happy to come back to the peloton. Pfeiffer stayed with me on the VAM-berg and Floortje made it into the front group, before Pfeiffer then closed the gap to them. A couple of groups tried to go clear and in the end there wee four riders away but Floortje and Pfeiffer started chasing and it was all under control. I'm really happy to be able to take the win for everyone after a day with so much teamwork. We're really looking forward to our next races now."

As for runner-up, World Champion Elisa Balsamo: "Today the team did a great job, we were working from the first kilometers and the team was amazing and this second place is okay, we always race to win but today Lorena was stronger."