Longo Borghini and Australian Grace Brown (FDJ Nouvelle-Aquitaine Futuroscope) went into the sixth day of racing locked together on time, with Brown ahead on a tiebreaker.
After losing three bonus seconds to yellow jersey Brown in the first intermediate sprint, the Italian champion was able to surge at the front of the peloton through the technical turns in the final kilometre and hold on to finish in third place, with Lorena Wiebes (Team DSM) and Brown’s teammate Clara Copponi overtaking her to claim the top two places.
The four bonus seconds for third place gave Longo Borghini a one-second lead over Brown in GC to take the overall victory, while Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM) finished third at five seconds back.
Brown was surprised after the finish, where she placed 12th, having been almost assured of victory with Italian champion not known for her sprinting ability.
“We thought that we were pretty safe for the final as long as there were no gaps but it was really messy,” Brown said. “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.”
"It was a bit of a surprise at the finish that Elisa took third place and the bonus seconds. It's a bit disappointing for sure, but overall I think we can be very proud of this week.”
"Second is always something to celebrate I think. From this week, I think I will remember the very good times we had with the team!"
Longo Borghini was over the moon with her result, the unlikely sprint in the finale a combination of team tactics and motivation from teammate Lizzie Deignan, currently on maternity leave.
“Lizzie sent me a nice message yesterday and said remember my sprint in 2019. That was such a close battle again with Kasia Niewiadoma and she made it, so yeah it was nice to hear from her about that.”
The Italian revealed that she had written off the race in her head after the first intermediate sprint saw Brown take three bonus seconds, with Longo Borghini not able to raise much of a sprint despite a strong leadout from her Trek-Segafredo teammates.
“I thought ‘okay, that’s second place, that’s it’. But all my teammates were like ‘we’ll try at the finish line, we’ll do the lead-out for you’. I was really doubting, but when I saw such a motivated team and they really believe in you, I just wanted to give them back everything,” said Longo Borghini.
“We knew the finale was pretty technical and we studied it this morning with Ina Teutenberg (Trek-Segafredo sports director). This is also why in the end I think they all believed I could do it because of the corners.
“In the end they all did a perfect job,” Longo Borghini said of her teammates. “I let some riders go in to take the draft, then I did my own sprint. It was a very good display of teamwork and I’m really thankful to all my teammates and to the staff that’s here working for me. We showed how much teamwork is worth in cycling.”
Lorena Wiebes’ third stage victory of the race highlighted her dominance of the sprints, she comfortably won the sprints jersey, with Elise Chabbey (Canyon-SRAM) taking home the mountain classification. Canyon-SRAM also took out the team’s classification, with Kasia Niewiadoma’s third overall highlighting their performance.
Australian Alex Manly (BikeExchange-Jayco) concluded a strong race with fourth overall, finishing 24 seconds down on Longo Borghini.
