In a strong finish to the 2023 season, Daria Pikulik of Human Powered Health emerged victorious at the women’s Tour of Guangxi, the final race of the Women’s WorldTour season. She beat Chiara Consonni from UAE Team ADQ and Mia Griffin of Israel-Premier Tech Roland to the finish line in Guilin. Notably, Pikulik’s win bookends her season, as she had also claimed the first race of the 2023 women’s calendar at stage 1 of the Tour Down Under.
The race consisted of a 144.6-kilometre course that featured two climbs in its latter half but was predominantly flat. An initial breakaway by Lu Siying of the Chinese national team and Gulnaz Khatuntseva from Li Ning Star Ladies gained a 4:30-minute lead at the race’s midpoint. However, the peloton organised an effective chase, reeling the duo in before they could conquer the main climb, Yanshan Hill.
Victorie Guilman of FDJ-SUEZ seized the mountain sprint, winning the Queen of the Mountains (QOM) classification. Following Guilman, Anouska Koster of Uno-X Pro Cycling Team and Tamara Dronova of Israel-Premier Tech Roland completed the mountain sprint ranking.
After a descent, Feng Lin of the Chinese National Team briefly escaped the peloton with a gap of one minute but was eventually caught 25 km from the finish, setting the stage for a bunch sprint. The sprinting finale continues a trend seen in last week’s Tour of Chongming Island, which also concluded with sprint battle deciders in China.
This victory marks the first time since the Women’s WorldTour’s inception in 2016 that a rider has won both the opening and closing races of the season. Despite this milestone, the Tour of Guangxi may face demotion from the Women’s WorldTour in 2024, as it failed to provide the obligatory 45 minutes of live coverage, putting it at risk of sanction by the UCI. Last year, the RideLondon Classique narrowly retained its WorldTour spot by promising future coverage, leaving the Tour of Guangxi’s 2024 status in jeopardy.
2023 Tour of Guangxi result
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