Sandra Alonso (Ceratizit-WNT) won the women's one day Tour of Guangxi on Sunday, beating Giada Borghesi (Human Powered Health) after the pair spent 35km in a breakaway together.
Alonso's teammate Marta Lach won the sprint from the chase group for third place.
In a circuit race where the situation changed frequently and breakaways and chase groups merged and split on the short but steep climb of Qingxiu Mountain, Borghesi and Alonso had attacked with 35km to go.
They worked together well and started the final 27.2km lap 1:16 minutes ahead of a group of 20, where both had several teammates who disrupted the chase. In the last 15km, the pace completely went out of the chase, and Borghesi and Alonso had plenty of time to play cat-and-mouse coming into the final kilometre.
Alonso refused to take over from Borghesi, then launched her sprint out of the Italian's slipstream to take her first Women's WorldTour victory. Then 2:49 minutes later, Lach won the sprint for third place.
How it unfolded
After several editions in Guilin where a sprint finish was a certainty, the 2024 race was held under tropical conditions with temperatures above 30°C in Guangxi’s provincial capital of Nanning. The peloton had to do five laps of a 27.2km circuit that included the 1.4km, 11% climb of Qingxiu Mountain. There were QOM points on offer on the first, third, and final laps while intermediate sprints were put on at the finish line after the second and fourth laps.
Tiril Jørgensen (Team Coop-Repsol) won the first QOM sprint ahead of Idoia Eraso (Laboral Kutxa-Fundación Euskadi) and Aurela Nerlo (Winspace). The three riders had gone clear on the climb but were reeled in again soon afterwards.
Early on the third lap, Eraso went on a solo attack, winning the second QOM sprint, with Jørgensen and Silvia Zanardi (Human Powered Health) picking up the remaining points from a chase group that had formed on the climb and also included Laura Tomasi (Laboral Kutxa-Fundación Euskadi), Elena Pirrone (Roland), Kathrin Schweinberger (Ceratizit-WNT), Anne Knijnenburg (VolkerWessels), Karolina Kumięga (UAE Team ADQ), and Hanna Tserakh (BTC Ljubljana Zhiraf Ambedo).
55km from the finish, just before passing the finish line with two laps to go, Eraso was caught by this chase group. On the climb, Pirrone, Kumięga, Knijnenburg, and Jørgensen dropped the other five riders, and Tamara Dronova (Roland) bridged to the front after having attacked from the peloton.
Further behind, Barbara Malcotti (Human Powered Health) put in a hard attack that split the peloton completely, picking up the dropped riders from the chase group as more riders went off the front on the climb and descent.
When these two groups had come together, Borghesi launched a strong attack with 35.5km to go that only Alonso could follow, and as the other riders looked at each other, the Italian-Spanish duo quickly built a gap.
1:16 minutes ahead going into the final lap, Borghesi did the pacing on the last ascent of Qingxiu Mountain as Alonso looked to be at her limit. The 26-year-old Spaniard had bluffed, though, jumping clear from Borghesi’s wheel in the final 100 metres of the climb. Borghesi closed the gap over the top, and they soon fell back into their familiar cooperative rhythm.
The chase group of 20 riders had split on the climb, and 58 seconds behind Alonso, Jørgensen took the last remaining mountain point to win the QOM classification. Malcotti, Knijnenburg, Eleonora Gasparrini (UAE Team ADQ), Laura Asencio (Ceratizit-WNT), Nadia Quagliotto (Laboral Kutxa-Fundación Euskadi), and Jørgensen did not push on, though, allowing Urša Pintar (BTC Ljubljana Zhiraf Ambedo) and Nerlo to get back after the descent.
Asencio and Malcotti obviously had no interest in chasing down their teammates, and other riders had teammates trying to chase back, so the cooperation in the group wasn’t great. When Rachael Wales (ARA-Skip Capital) and Kumięga came back with 12.5km to go, the Polish rider went right past the group to go on the attack but could not get away.
As Alonso and Borghesi traded turns at the front, more riders returned to the chase group that grew to 17 riders, three of which were from Ceratizit-WNT while Human Powered Health had two riders there. They effectively shut down all attempts to form a cohesive chase, prompting Jørgensen to launch an attack. She was covered by Laura Asencio (Ceratizit-WNT) and did not get away.
The next to try a move was Cristina Tonetti (Laboral Kutxa-Fundación Euskadi) with about 4km to go. She got a gap but was eventually reeled in as well, but the front duo’s advantage had gone out to well over two minutes by now, leaving the group to race for third place.
Up front, Alonso and Borghesi started playing cat-and-mouse, with Borghesi asking Alonso to come to the front by repeatedly flicking her elbow. Alonso was happy to sit on Borghesi’s wheel, though, even as the Italian did several fake sprints on the final kilometre. Finally, Alonso came out of the slipstream with 175 metres to go, easily beating Borghesi and raising her hands on the line to celebrate.
Magdalene Lind (Team Coop-Repsol) launched an attack at the flamme rouge but had four riders following her and effectively just ended up leading out the sprint. Lach went early with 300 metres to go and pulled away with Schweinberger on her wheel, and the two Ceratizit-WNT riders took third and fourth place.
As the race brings the 2024 season of top-tier racing to a close, World Champion Lotte Kopecky (SD Worx-Protime) is now confirmed as the Women’s WorldTour overall ranking winner while Shirin van Anrooij (Lidl-Trek) claimed the U23 ranking.
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