Evans digs in to finish Tour on a high

Neah Evans labelled her last gruelling kilometre as the toughest road finale she has faced after bringing the curtain down on the 2018 ASDA Tour de Yorkshire Women’s race.

The Scot hit the deck when crashing on Thursday’s first stage but emphatically got herself back up to take to Friday’s start line, the first time the women’s race has covered two stages.

But that proved just the start of the task, a 120km assault from Barnsley to Ilkley culminating in a gargantuan summit finish for the first time. Alongside her Storey Racing team-mates, Evans certainly did herself proud too – not far off the leading group, headed up by race winner Megan Guarnier. And with just 24 hours between her incident and finishing her two days on a high, things are looking bright for the rest of the season for the 27-year-old.

“I hadn’t recced it so I hadn’t quite appreciated how much it was going to kick on at the end,” she said. “It picked up in the town and from there I knew it was going to be tough, I could see the kilometres ticking down but I felt all right – and then it just ramped up.

“That’s the toughest last kilometre I’ve had on the road. I was hoping that it was going to be a little bit softer because I can sit and follow a wheel quite nicely. We had three riders right at the top there coming through so that’s fantastic.”

Both the stage win and general classification went to Guarnier, seeing her don the Yorkshire Bank and Yorkshire Bank Bike Libraries leader’s jersey. But there wasn’t a happy ending for Evans’ fellow Scot Katie Archibald, crashing on stage two and being taken to hospital as a precaution.