Wiggle Honda Pro Cycling’s Giorgia Bronzini put the disappointment of the previous day’s eleventh place well and truly behind her with an emphatic sprint victory in the second stage of the Tour of Chongming Island in Chongxi. The former two-time World road champion, who was almost brought down by a crash in the final two kilometres of stage one, found a clear path to the line this time and powered past of Chloe Hosking (Hitec Products) to win by almost a bike length.
Annette Edmondson (Orica-AIS) – who was the rider to have been brought down in front of Bronzini on stage one – finished third as she crossed the line in Bronzini’s wake.
“It was the GreenEdge train again for Edmondson today, and I was on the wheel of Chloe Hosking,” Bronzini explained. “The last teammate to bring me there was Beatrice [Bartelloni]. I felt very good through the whole race, and I told the girls and they worked hard for me to he finish line.
“Most of all in the finish from Beatrice,” Bronzini added. “Because she is able to have the power to bring me up to the front, and she’s not scared to fight with the others. So I was in the right position at the right moment.”
Conditions for the 114km stage were windy once again, on a course that offers few other obstacles, with heavy rain making the roads slick and treacherous and causing numerous punctures. A group escaped midway through the race, containing Bronzini and most of the other big favourites; the peloton split into pieces behind the break, with stage one winner Lucy Garner (Argos-Shimano) trapped in the third group, but the race was all together again as it came into the finish.
“It was a little bit of a hard race today, because there was a break in the middle of the race with the best riders – there were 15 of us I think – and they were pushing hard to try to get to the finish,” said Bronzini. “After the second intermediate sprint, when they saw that the bunch was at 30 seconds, they stopped pulling, the big bunch caught us and we arrived at the finish together.”
A ten-second time bonus on the line means that, despite the disappointment of stage one, Bronzini now sits in fourth place, just nine seconds behind new race leader Hosking, with one stage remaining.
“For tomorrow we will go for the stage – to be in the sprint for the stage – and then the maximum power for the World Cup on Sunday,” Bronzini confirmed.
