Wiebes makes it two at Tour of Chongming Island

Lorena Wiebes (Parkhotel Valkenburg) won stage 2 of the Tour of Chongming Island. She was quickest in the sprint after a fast stage in warm conditions, cruising on other teams' sprint trains on the final kilometre and launching her own kick at the right moment. Jutatip Maneephan (Thailand Women's Cycling Team) finished second, Lucy Garner (Hitec Products-Birk Sport) took third place. With her stage win, Wiebes defends the overall race lead ahead of Saturday's final stage.

The 126.6-kilometre stage started in Fenghuang Park on the neighbouring island of Changxing, crossing to Chongming via the Shanghai Yangtze River Bridge. Rising 60 metres above sea level, the bridge also functioned as the mountain sprint of the day. Nina Kessler (Tibco-Silicon Valley Bank) who had won the solo mountain sprint on stage 1 was first over the bridge, securing her mountain jersey as there are no mountain sprints on stage 3.

On Chongming, the stage covered much of the eastern half of the flat island, with two intermediate sprints along the way. Tatsiana Sharakova (Minsk Cycling Club) went on a solo breakaway and held a 30-second gap for a while. She won the first intermediate sprint ahead of Maneephan and Wiebes but was reeled in again shortly afterwards.

Wiebes won the second intermediate sprint ahead of Roy and Kopecky, gaining valuable time bonifications towards her overall lead. 41 km from the finish, Olga Zabelinskaya (Cogeas Metter Look) and Valeriya Kononenko (Lviv Cycling Team) attacked. They quickly built an advantage of up to 41 seconds, but Zabelinskaya suffered a rear wheel puncture with 36 km to go.

While Kononenko continued on her own, a concerted chase led by Parkhotel Valkenburg and Mitchelton-Scott meant that her lead dwindled slowly, but surely. The Ukrainian was caught 18 km from the finish.

There was a flurry of attacks from the peloton, but Parkhotel Valkenburg quickly took control of the race again, covering each move and keeping the race together for a bunch sprint.

While yellow jersey Wiebes had been near the front of the peloton for a long time, Lotte Kopecky only moved up from mid-pack with the help of her Lotto Soudal Ladies around the four-kilometre mark. The jostle for positions on the final kilometres brought the Mitchelton-Scott sprint train to the front through the last corner with 900 metres to go.

Wiebes had no teammates left at this point and latched onto the wheel of Sarah Roy (Mitchelton-Scott). When Marta Tagliaferro (Hitec Products-Birk Sport) opened the sprint very early, almost 500 metres from the line, the Australian team’s train was swamped by the other sprinters. Wiebes jumped onto Tagliaferro’s wheel, launched her own sprint with about 200 metres to go, and won the sprint in convincing fashion.

With her second consecutive stage win, Wiebes defended the yellow jersey for the overall lead as well as the green points jersey and the white U23 jersey. In Wiebes’ slipstream, Maneephan sprinted to second place on the stage, moving her up to second overall and strengthening her grip on the blue jersey for the best Asian rider. The Tour of Chongming Island finishes on Saturday with a stage of 118.4 km around the New City Park.

Full Results