A quick preview look at the Tour of Chongming Island 2024

Mathew Mitchell

Published on October 14, 2024
in Women's Cycling

The Tour of Chongming Island is a bit of an unheralded long-stay of women’s cycling. The eponymous island is found next to Shanghai in the mouth of where the Yangtze River meets the East China Sea. It’s very very flat, meaning that the racing here almost always comes down to a sprint finish and a GC decided by bonus intermediate sprint seconds. The race had to go on hiatus during the height of the Covid pandemic, so no race was held in the 3 years between 2020-2022 but it made its return to the calendar last year when Chiara Consonni took the honours.

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First held in 2007, Meifang Li won the first two editions for China, who subsequently found it harder to register in the GC. After 5 podium finishes in the race’s first 3 editions, no Chinese rider has made the podium again in their home race. Australia, Germany and the Netherlands have battled for dominance over the years, with Chloe Hosking taking a pair of wins (2009 & 2016), Ina-Yoko Teutenberg (2010 & 2011) and Kirsten Wild (2014 & 2015). No rider has won more than 2 editions. Kirsten Wild has taken the most stage wins with 7 in total, ahead of Chloe Hosking and Giorgia Bronzini. Because of the 3 years in which the race wasn’t held, most of the stats are still held by the previous generation of sprinting stars rather than the likes of Lorena Wiebes, who won all 3 stages and the GC in her only edition in 2019.

This year’s course is no different – it’s super flat and riders who think they might miss out on the top 3 positions in the sprints can very quickly secure a good GC position by picking up intermediate bonus seconds. That’s especially important for teams like VolkerWessels and Laboral Kutxa who are in China to try and pick up UCI points. VolkerWessels can wrap up the second and final Women’s WorldTour wildcard spot here and whilst Laboral Kutxa would also like that spot, they can earn points looking ahead to the next Women’s WorldTour team selection at the end of the 2025 season. Ceratizit-WNT, Roland and Human Powered Health are current Women’s WorldTour teams also looking to make sure they have enough points for the same team selection to remain in the WWT.