Hosking wins Tour of Chongming Island stage 2

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Chloe Hosking (Wiggle High5) won stage two of the Tour of Chongming Island to take the race lead and set up overall victory in the three-day Women’s WorldTour event.

The Australian beat Canada’s Leah Kirchmann (Team Liv Plantur) and Jip van den Bos (Parkhotel Valkenburg) in a close sprint finish.

Hosking now leads Kirchmann by four seconds with one stage left to race.

"Today was a very different day from yesterday," Hosking said in a team press release. “It was windy and the course was a lot more technical which was a lot a better for our team so we wanted to take full advantage of that. We had highlighted a point about 15km from the finish line where we knew there would be crosswinds but as it turned out Liv-Plantur hit it about 20km earlier and totally shattered the peloton catching out a lot of the main General Classification riders. Dani [King] and I were there and rolled with them but it all came back together which was a bummer but I do think it took a bit of sting out of the peloton’s legs.

"It sounds stupid but as soon as the race started I just had a good feeling in my legs so I went for both intermediate sprints and picked up 5 of the maximum 6 bonus seconds on offer. That was a big confidence boost," she added.

"In the final I was sort of just surfing trains between Alé-Cipollini and Liv and just went at the right moment. With the down hill sprint I knew that I could start my sprint a bit earlier and it paid off.

"I'm so pleased to get the win today for the team but there's still one more day to go."

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