Wiggle Honda Pro Cycling’s Giorgia Bronzini took fifth place in a hectic bunch sprint at the end of the third and final stage of the Tour of Chongming Island at Shanghai East Beach. The former two-time World road champion was just unable to repeat her stunning victory from the previous day as the sprinters fanned out in the final dash for the line.
Commonwealth champion Rochelle Gilmore also sprinted to tenth place, to put two Wiggle Honda Pro Cycling riders in the top ten.
“It’s not the result that we wanted,” admitted Wiggle Honda Pro Cycling directeur sportif Simon Cope. “Giorgia’s pretty disappointed with her result, but [Orica-AIS] really got their act together today. I don’t know that they were too far back, or if they did make a mistake by not being far enough up, but Orica were really good.”
The 80km stage, made up of eight laps of a ten kilometre city circuit, was won by Annette Edmondson (Orica-AIS), ahead of 2007 World champion Marta Bastianelli (Faren-Let’s Go Finland) and Edmondson’s own teammate, Swedish champion Emma Johansson. Time bonuses on the line meant that Edmondson also secured the overall race victory.
Bronzini’s fifth place meant that Wiggle Honda Pro Cycling’s Italian superstar held on to her overall fourth place in the final general classifcation.
With the two preceding stages having been affected by crashes to a varying degree, the sprint for stage three was no different with a final kilometre incident threatening to disrupt the final sprint.
“Kim de Baat went down in the last corner,” Cope confirmed, “but I’m not quite sure what caused it, so I’m not quite sure what happened there.”
Thankfully none of the Wiggle Honda Pro Cycling riders were affected by the incident, and Bronzini and Gilmore’s teammates Beatrice Bartelloni, Emily Collins, Amy Roberts and Anna-Bianca Schnitzmeier finished the stage safely after another strong performance.
“They all rode well and covered everything,” said Cope. “The performance from the team was very good, it just didn’t get the end result really.
“Hopefully it’ll be better for the World Cup on Sunday,” he added. “It’s the same finish as yesterday so it should be interesting.”
