Hosking takes the win at women's Tour of Guangxi

Chloe Hosking finished off her three years at Alé Cipollini in style on Tuesday, winning the women's Tour of Guangxi in China in her final race for the Italian team as the Australian sprinter has signed with Rally UHC for the 2020 season.

Two climbs on the race route led to a reduced bunch sprint in Guilin, where Hosking was first over the line ahead of Tibco-SVB's Alison Jackson.

Marianne Vos (CCC-Liv) finished in third place, overtaking world champion Annemiek van Vleuten (Mitchelton-Scott) in the final race of the year to win the UCI Women's WorldTour classification.

How it unfolded

Held on the final day of the six-day men's stage race, the women's Tour of Guangxi covered 145.8km from the start south of Guilin to the finish in the centre of Guilin. The race was mostly flat, only punctuated by two back-to-back climbs of 2.1 and 4.3 kilometres, respectively. 

The second climb ended 42km from the finish, and after the descent there were still 30km left for dropped riders to chase back on.

A total of 87 riders started the race, and Pu Yixian (China Liv Pro Cycling) went on a long solo break early on. The unpertubed peloton let the Chinese rider get an advantage of almost five minutes. 

The speed picked up as the race came closer to the climbs. Setting a hard pace on the first climb, Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio (CCC-Liv) reduced the peloton to around 45 riders and brought the peloton to within a minute of Pu.

Pu was caught on the second climb, while Yanshan Hill, and Moolman-Pasio crested the climb at the front of a group of some 25 riders to win the mountain classification. More riders came back in the descent that followed, and a peloton of about 40 riders reached Guilin together.

Despite a crash on the rain-wet roads on the final ten kilometres, most sprinters made it to the finishing straight. Vos started her sprint early, but Hosking came around the Dutchwoman to claim the victory.

World Ranking leader Lorena Wiebes (Parkhotel Valkenburg) wasn't racing, but neither was Marta Cavalli (Valcar Cylance), meaning that Wiebes won the light-blue UCI Women's WorldTour U23 classification jersey.

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