Tour of Chongming Island – Lach wins stage 2 in Ceratizit-WNT 1-2-3

Marta Lach (Ceratizit-WNT) won stage 2 of the Tour of Chongming Island in a mass sprint, with stage 1 winner Mylène de Zoete and Kathrin Schweinberger completing a 1-2-3 for the team. 

Alba Teruel (Laboral Kutxa-Fundación Euskadi) finished just behind Schweinberger in fourth place.

After breakaways from Tamara Dronova (Roland), Zhao Qing (China), and Chinese champion Zhang Hao (China Liv Pro Cycling) were reeled in, Aurela Nerlo (Winspace) attacked 23km from the finish. She built a gap of up to 48 seconds but was eventually caught with 3.8km to go, setting up another bunch sprint.

Sandra Alonso (Ceratizit-WNT) dropped her teammates off at the 500-metre mark, and in a sprint across the wide two-lane road, the team managed to get its riders across the line first, second, and third.

De Zoete keeps the yellow jersey, now leading the GC by three seconds on Lach and 13 seconds on Tereza Neumanová (UAE Team ADQ) and Schweinberger.

How it unfolded

The stage started on the island of Changxing, crossing the Shanghai Yangtze River Bridge after 9km – this was also the QOM sprint of the day, won by Anne Knijnenburg (VolkerWessels). After snaking around the eastern half of Chongming Island, the finish after 129km was at the New City Park, same as for stage 1, but coming from the other side.

Sofie van Rooijen (VolkerWessels) won the first intermediate sprint ahead of Lach and Hanna Tserakh (BTC City Ljubljana Zhiraf Ambedo), and the second intermediate sprint was taken by Dronova who had attacked a bit earlier and gone solo. Scarlett Souren (VolkerWessels) won the sprint for second ahead of Schweinberger.

At 46km from the finish, Dronova was 16 seconds ahead, then Zhao bridged across the gap. Dronova let the Chinese rider take the front and then sat on her wheel, refusing to take a turn and both were caught with 39.5km to go.

Zhang attacked less than a kilometre later and quickly built a sizable gap. Her teammate Lu Siying went after her but never made it to the front, hovering around 20 seconds behind Zhang while the peloton was up to 38 seconds behind. When Lu was reeled in 26km from the finish, the counterattacks that followed lifted the speed of the peloton, and Zhang was also caught with 23km to go.

Nerlo counterattacked right away and quickly had a 20-second lead, with Ceratizit-WNT and VolkerWessels organising the chase. 15km from the line, Nerlo was 48 seconds up on the peloton before her advantage came down again as the sprinters’ teams went all-out to reel her in. With Human Powered Health adding to the chase effort in the final ten kilometres, Nerlo was caught 3.8km from the line.

When Alonso swung off at the 500-metre mark, Schweinberger started to crank up the speed with De Zoete in her wheel and Lach to the right of the yellow jersey, but Eleonora Gasparrini (UAE Team ADQ) took the lead. Her teammate Neumanová had to go around a couple of riders to get into Gasparrini’s wheel. 

Neumanová started her sprint with 250 metres to go, still half a bike length behind Schweinberger. On the final 100 metres, Lach and De Zoete fanned out from Schweinberger’s wheel, coming around the Austrian to take first and second. In Schweinberger’s slipstream, Teruel finished fourth while Neumanová lost speed at the end and finished in ninth place.

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