The Tour of Chongming Island is famous for being a sprinters’ paradise as the race is almost totally flat, and like in most years, the 2023 edition featured three-bunch sprints on as many stages.
In the final stage 3, overall victory was still on the line and fiercely fought for. We’ve analysed the sprint that won Chiara Consonni (UAE Team ADQ) the stage and the GC.
Going into the left-hand corner onto the three-kilometre finishing straight, Uno-X Pro Cycling Team had taken the front with Rebecca Koerner and Wilma Olausson ahead of Anniina Ahtosalo who would win the white U23 jersey if she could get any bonus seconds on the finish line.
The Scandinavian team was first through the turn, but then Thi That Nguyen (Israel-Premier Tech Roland) came past them on their right with a three-rider train from Human Powered Health on her wheel.
The orange-clad took over when Nguyen dropped back; then a Li Ning Star Ladies rider made a curious attack down the left-hand side with 2.5km to go. She did manage to get slightly in front of the Human Powered Health train (but was mainly two lanes to their left), then she sat up again and dropped back through the ranks.
Olausson was leading the race with two kilometres to go while Ahtosalo was in fourth position with Marit Raaijmakers and Marjolein van’t Geloof (both Human Powered Health) in between. Their sprinter Daria Pikulik was on Ahtosalo’s wheel, Chang Yue (China national team) was on Ahtosalo’s left with Alice Sharpe and Maggie Coles-Lyster (both Israel-Premier Tech) coming up beside her while Marta Lach and Martina Fidanza (both Ceratizit-WNT) were moving up on the right side. Wearing the green jersey, Consonni was on Fidanza’s wheel.
Olausson swung off about 1.2km from the finish line, and Raaijmakers brought the peloton into the final kilometre. The Ceratizit-WNT train passed her and Van’t Geloof, putting Fidanza into second wheel with Consonni behind her.
Ahtosalo had opted to drop back a little and sat just behind and to the left of Consonni while a UAE Team ADQ rider acted as sweeper next to the Finnish champion, preventing Pikulik from sitting on Consonni’s wheel.
Van’t Geloof tried her best but led out the sprint more for Sharpe and Coles-Lyster than for her own sprinter, who was somewhat boxed in further to the right. Fidanza and Ahtosalo launched their sprints almost simultaneously. On the left side of the road, stage 2 winner Hanna Tserakh (Li Ning Star Ladies) also went very early; she had a lot of ground to make up as her team hadn’t managed to position her as well as the previous day.
On the final 100 metres, Consonni came past Fidanza on her right and took the lead while Ahtosalo slotted in behind Fidanza for a short time, using the slipstream to launch a second kick towards the line. Pikulik and Coles-Lyster were cranking up the speed behind Consonni – but when Pikulik squeezed through to start to pull alongside Consonni between the green jersey and the barriers, Coles-Lyster had to briefly stop pedalling and restart her sprint, going to the left of Consonni’s rear wheel instead. Pikulik herself also missed two pedal strokes about 50 metres from the line as there was no room between Consonni and the barriers to come through.
None of this looked worthy of further investigation or even a relegation as neither Consonni nor Pikulik veered off their sprinting lane, the small deviations being explained by the enormous forces the riders put onto the pedals in a mass sprint.
The Polish sprinter eventually found a gap when Consonni moved slightly left again and almost passed her with her remaining nine pedal strokes, finishing about two-thirds of a bike length behind and just beating Fidanza to second place.
Ahtosalo was fourth, half a bike length further back, while Coles-Lyster finished fifth, and Rachele Barbieri (Liv Racing TeqFind) was sixth. After a small gap, Tserakh was ‘best of the rest’ in seventh place.
