The 138 kilometres race began with the Boels Dolmans team, who boasted 2014 World Cup winner Lizzie Armitstead of Britain in their ranks, team setting the pace at the head of the race.

Armitstead, winner of the race last year, was perhaps trying to take advantage of the absence of two of her major rivals in world champion Pauline Ferrand-Prévot of France and London 2012 road race champion Marianne Vos of The Netherlands.

With the race entering the cobbled sections, riders were beginning to be dropped from the 120 rider peloton which started the race in Hoogeven and the Rabo-Liv team decided to increase the tempo further.

The bunch had been significantly reduced after the trickiest cobbled section of the course came to a close and Olympic silver medallist Armitstead chose to launch her bid for victory, but her move was covered by Wiggle Honda's Italian rider Elisa Longo Borghini.

Armitstead attacked for the second time as the riders ascended the VAMberg, with less than 30km to the finish, but once again her move failed to prove decisive.

Belgium's Jolien D'Hoore sprinted to victory in the opening UCI Women's World Cup event of the season on her 25th birthday ©Twitter



As the race headed back towards Hoogeven a bunch sprint appeared inevitable with the pace slowly reducing as teams began to position themselves for the sprint.

Wiggle Honda were well represented and utilised their numbers to good effect, successfully leading out D'Hoore to sprint to the victory in 3 hours 33min 34sec.

A Dutch trio followed D'Hoore home with Amy Pieters of Liv-Plantur claiming a second place finish and Ellen Van Dijk of Boels Dolmans completed the podium ahead of Rabobank-Liv's Lucinda Brand.

D'Hoore victory, in front of the UCI President Brian Cookson, saw her earn the World Cup leader's jersey, with the 2015 series to take place in in 10 countries across six months, before drawing to a close on August 29.

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