Marianne Vos added the Women's Tour de Yorkshire to her long list of accolades as victory on stage two in Scarborough gave her the overall win on Saturday.
The Dutchwoman out-sprinted Spaniard Mavi Garcia and Soraya Paladin into a howling headwind at the end of a 132km stage from Bridlington raced in brutal conditions.
The win was enough for Vos to secure the overall win by a margin of seven seconds from Garcia, with the general classification almost entirely decided by Saturday's stage after Friday's sprint finish in Bedale.
Vos the boss!@marianne_vos of @CCCLivTeam reigns supreme in Yorkshire. #WTDY pic.twitter.com/YQdBHx7Tot — Tour de Yorkshire 🚴 (@letouryorkshire) May 4, 2019
Vos' list of achievements goes off the page. The 31-year-old is a three-time former world champion, one-time Olympic champion, three-time Giro d'Italia winner and much more besides, but the CCC-Liv rider will not have raced in harder conditions than this too many times in her career.
Riders waited until the last possible moment to take the start-line in Bridlington in frigid temperatures, before facing headwinds of up to 40mph which blew rain, hail and even sleet in their faces while they traversed a route that included 1,850m of climbing through the North Yorkshire Moors.
"It was a crazy day," Vos said. "There were a lot of climbs and many attacks.
"We had to endure a lot and I actually don't know how I ended up in the front in the end.
"I was trying to go with the good moves and when I went with Paladin to the leader Garcia we knew that we had a chance if we just kept going. It's a great win."
Annemiek van Vleuten takes shelter in a cafe, hiding from the cold as riders await the start of the women's @letouryorkshire #WTDY pic.twitter.com/Gm5mbyC0ck — Ian Parker (@iparkysport) May 4, 2019
Canyon-SRAM's Hannah Barnes came home in eighth to be the best-placed Brit in the race, but Trek-Segafredo's Lizzie Deignan missed the key move with 50km to go and finished further back having chased down an earlier attack from reigning world champion Anna van der Breggen of Boels-Dolmans.
"I was just so empty at that point," Deignan said. "I can take away that I was there when I needed to be on the climbs but I was just completely blocked in the crosswinds and I'd kind of burned my matches trying to follow Anna.
"Tactically I didn't ride well, I didn't use energy in the right places but when you're on the limit you don't, you're not thinking clearly."
This was only Deignan's fourth race back since the birth of baby daughter Orla in September, and her first multi-stage event.
#WTDY@lizziedeignan on when she tried to get across to the lead grp:"I was just so empty at that point. I think I burnt my matches trying to follow Anna van der Breggen earlier. I was in no man's land and there wasn't much info on the radio. Tactically I didn't ride very well." pic.twitter.com/QjqGJRCJQo — Trek-Segafredo (@TrekSegafredo) May 4, 2019
"I felt really, really empty," the 30-year-old former world champion added. "I've been struggling a bit with my appetite trying to get enough calories in. That has been a problem for the last couple of days and I paid for that today."
It proved a stressful day for everyone. The race had been neutralised early on, with the first categorised climb in Silpho bypassed due to concerns over a slippery substance on the road, but by that point the riders were already being battered by some horrible weather.
"It was really bad," said Sheffield's Lizzy Banks, who tried in vain to defend the Queen of the Mountains jersey for Bigla.
"When we came down into Robin Hood's Bay we were going down the hill at 50mph and we had 40mph hail coming into our face.
"You couldn't see a thing. It was incredibly painful, you could barely see where you were going."
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