Chloe Hosking wins stage 2 and takes the lead in the Tour of Chongming Island

With a temperature that was slightly lower than in yesterday’s very hot stage, the peloton started out for a 112.8 kilometer stage in the Tour of Chongming Island today.

When the livestream started, there was a very thinned out peloton leading the race, with all jerseys represented in this front group.

A reminder of those jerseys: Ting Ying Huang (Chinese Tapei team) led the GC after her first stage victory, Leah Kirchmann (Team Liv-Plantur) was in the green jersey, Emilia Fahlin (Alé Cipollini) wore the polka dot mountain jersey and Lucy Garner (Wiggle-High5) was in the white U23 jersey.

Mostly Parkhotel Valkenburg, BePink and Team Liv-Plantur were working in the first group to keep the pace up. Other teams represented in that group were Alé Cipollini, Cylance Pro Cycling and Wiggle-High5, with French team PC Futuroscope having missed the split and working hard to get back to the lead group of around 40 riders.

At 24 kilometers from the finish line, a Servetto-Footon rider tried an attack and after an initial reaction by Dani King (Wiggle-High5) and Jermaine Post (Parkhotel Valkenburg), she got a small gap – being brought back again not much later.

It was the start of a number of attacks, as the tempo in the peloton had slowed down a little bit. Amy Roberts (Wiggle-High5) did an attempt to prevent another bunch sprint, just like Lija Laizane (Servetto-Footon) did, who was off the front for a while with a rider from BTC City Ljubljana and one from the Russian national team.

When all attacks had been neutralized and the final kilometers of the race had commenced, Team Liv-Plantur and Alé Cipollini both set up sprint trains for their sprinters Kirchmann and Annalisa Cucinotta respectively, but it was Chloe Hosking (Wiggle-High5) who benefited from it and opened her sprint very early, never to give back her lead.

Not really sure of her legs yesterday, Hosking was happy to have her team behind her and thanked them for the victory today:

Thank you to my teammates and staff for their support and belief. It feels good to know they’re backing you 100%. #TourofChongmingIsland

— Chloe Hosking (@chloe_hosking) 7 May 2016

Kirchmann once again crossed the line in second place, with Parkhotel Valkenburg’s Jip van den Bos sprinting to third, also taking over the U23 jersey from Garner.

Hosking now leads the GC, as Ting Ying Huang (Chinese Tapei team) has dropped to third place in the GC, behind Kirchmann.

If you missed the livestream, here’s a recap of the stage in the UCI highlights video (or alternatively, rewatch the entire livestream of stage 2):

And here’s our Velofocus gallery of stage 2 in the 2016 Tour of Chongming Island.

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One more stage to go! Stage 3 in the 2016 Tour of Chongming Island consists of nine laps on a local circuit: