{"id":168161,"date":"2025-06-08T17:41:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-08T17:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/168161\/"},"modified":"2025-06-08T17:41:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-08T17:41:09","slug":"ally-wollaston-pips-british-teenager-cat-ferguson-to-tour-of-britain-title-tour-of-britain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/168161\/","title":{"rendered":"Ally Wollaston pips British teenager Cat Ferguson to Tour of Britain title | Tour of Britain"},"content":{"rendered":"

The teenage prodigy Cat Ferguson came within a hair\u2019s breadth of executing a memorable overall win in her debut Tour of Britain<\/a>, but was outsprinted by her rival Ally Wollaston at the climax of the final stage in Glasgow.<\/p>\n

The pair came into the final sprint tied on time, after Wollaston had erased the 19-year-old Ferguson\u2019s overall lead. Bonus seconds for third place in the final sprint, behind the stage winner, Lorena Wiebes, was enough for the New Zealander to snatch the overall win.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was lucky that there were a lot of seconds up for grabs,\u201d Wollaston, riding for FDJ-Suez, said.<\/p>\n

Wiebes, SD Worx-Protime teammate to the absent defending champion, Lotte Kopecky, rescued her team\u2019s race with a peerless stage win. \u201cWe\u2019ve had some bad luck this week with crashes and lost GC hopes because of it,\u201d Wiebes said, \u201cbut wrapping up the week with a stage win feels great.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet it was Wollaston\u2019s day and her turns of speed in the intermediate sprints chiselled relentlessly away at Ferguson\u2019s narrow lead until only a single second separated the pair in the overall standings.<\/p>\n

After beating Ferguson yet again, in the third sprint, Wollaston asserted herself in the final dash to the line to take the biggest win of her career.<\/p>\n

Lorena Wiebes rescued her SD Worx-Protime team\u2019s race with a fine stage win. Photograph: Alex Whitehead\/SWpix.com\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

\u201cThe plan was to get as many seconds as I could, and unfortunately Cat was on my wheel for every single one, so it really came down to the last sprint,\u201d she said. \u201cThere was definitely a moment where I thought, \u2018I just cannot do this today.\u2019 My teammates really helped me, and pulled me to the front for the final.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Aucklander\u2019s success came at Ferguson\u2019s expense and the teenager from Skipton crossed the finish line in tears as she realised she had lost the overall lead. \u201cI would have loved to have won. I am gutted, but she was the strongest today,\u201d Ferguson, of the Movistar team, said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you had told me at the beginning of the week that I\u2019d be second, I would have been over the moon, so I can\u2019t be too disappointed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Victory began to slip from Ferguson\u2019s grasp in the series of intermediate sprints centred on Glasgow Green, in which she and her Movistar team were consistently overpowered by Wollaston and her FDJ-Suez team.<\/p>\n

A mid-race puncture also forced an unwelcome bike change and left Ferguson chasing the peloton on the fast circuit. \u201cIt was eventful for sure,\u201d Ferguson, who also won the points and best young rider classifications, said. \u201cThere was always something going on during the intermediate sprints. I had a puncture, but I didn\u2019t want to change the bike, because I felt OK, [but] then it was slowly going down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Try as she might, the teenager was unable to prevent Wollaston\u2019s track racing experience from eroding the hard-fought gains made in Saturday\u2019s stage, through the rainswept hills west of Kelso.<\/p>\n

In the final crucial sprint, Wollaston\u2019s team put her in a better position on the last bend. \u201cI got a bit chopped up on some corners and really that was it,\u201d Ferguson said. \u201cAlly went away and I knew that was it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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But Ferguson, winner of the junior world road race and time trial titles last season, can take heart from a consistently strong performance throughout the four day race. The race\u2019s most dramatic moments came in the hills around Kelso in Saturday\u2019s attritional and rainswept 143.8-kilometre third stage<\/a>. As others suffered, Ferguson flourished.<\/p>\n

The stage, marked by two major crashes, proved catastrophic for the overnight race leader, Kristen Faulkner, who suffered a series of mishaps and finished more than three minutes behind Ferguson.<\/p>\n

The 19-year-old, who had said \u201cI love it when it rains\u201d following a win earlier this season, was true to her word on Saturday, showing true grit and bike handling skills, particularly on the greasy Kelso cobbles at the finish.<\/p>\n

Ferguson described the torrid conditions around Kelso as \u201creally horrible,\u201d but said \u201cthe rain brings out the racer in me and gives me more adrenaline\u201d.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, as Ferguson pondered what might have been, a tearful Lizzie Deignan<\/a> rolled to a halt in Glasgow, after completing her final day of racing on British roads.<\/p>\n

Describing her feelings as \u201cvery close to the surface\u201d, Deignan, who retires at the end of this season, said her final day racing in Britain was \u201cemotional.\u201d The 36 old described the Glasgow stage as \u201cfast and technical and scary, but really fun as well\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe crowd were amazing and the team committed 100%,\u201d she said. \u201cWe were against all odds today, but we didn\u2019t give up.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The teenage prodigy Cat Ferguson came within a hair\u2019s breadth of executing a memorable overall win in her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168162,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4104],"tags":[4230,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-168161","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114648978753628679","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168161\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}