Josie Talbot (Liv AlUla Jayco) sprinted to victory from a leading group of ten to claim her first WorldTour win on stage 3 of the Tour of Chongming Island on Thursday.
The Australian sat up and celebrated over the line on the final stage of the Women's WorldTour race in China after carving out a solid gap to Riejanne Markus (Lidl–Trek). Markus claimed second place in a tight battle with Anne Knijnenburg (VolkerWessels), who was in seventh spot overall with a 16 second deficit at the start of the stage.
"I was a little nervous. I was waiting for the peloton to come flying past us but it just never did so I had to switch on and get the job done with me and Quinty (Ton) there in the final," said Talbot in a team social media post. "I'm so glad I could finish it off for the team. It's been a ripper week here."
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It was a dramatic finale to the stage, run as laps of Chongming New City Park. The powerful break escaped within 4km to go and while they were setting up to sprint for victory a crash occurred in the chase behind.
It was a crash that took down the rider who had started the day in the race leader's jersey Sofie van Rooijen (UAE Team ADQ). After stage 2 she had led the overall with an eight second margin to Georgia Baker (Liv AlUla Jayco) and nine to Mia Griffin (Roland Le Dévoluy).
The final general classification results after stage 3 were yet to be confirmed when this article was first put out, but an Instagram post from her VolkerWessels team showing the podium ceremony and Knijnenburg in yellow made it clear that she had been awarded the overall victory.
Later the overall results came through, showing that Knijnenburg had taken victory by just one second ahead of a group of three riders. Van Rooijen took second on the countback while Tamara Dronova (Roland Le Dévoluy) was third and Riejanne Markus (Lidl-Trek) fourth.
How it unfolded
With the overall battle so tight the competition in the 111.4km stage heated up well before the finish line. There was no holding back in the three intermediate sprints - 29.5km, 53.9km and 76km into the race – given the bonus time the top three placings bought with them, three seconds for first, two for second and one for third.
Elisa Balsamo (Lidl-Trek) swept up top points in the first with Sofie van Rooijen second and Kathrin Schweinberger (Human Powered Health) third. In the second Balsamo again triumphed but Georgia Baker settled into second this time.
Third time round Mia Griffin took the three second bonus with Balsamo next and Schweinberger completing her clean sweep of the day's third placings in the intermediate sprints.
The break attempts, large groups and small, came and went through the day of racing with splits and launches aplenty but with what was at stake the efforts to haul riders back in were as relentless as the attack efforts. A solo attack by Laura Lizette Sander (Team Coop Repsol) was pulled back at around 10km to go and it wasn't long before another of her teammates went but the peloton just keep stalking and pouncing on what seemed to be on the constant procession of riders making moves.
The powerful group of ten that leapt off the front within the final kilometres however proved to be predator and not prey. They hauled out the gap and then spread wide across the road as they charged to the line to divvy up the spoils. Talbot was the one who had to pace and timing to claim the biggest prize, a first WorldTour win.
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