MIga and Stegehuis win the Prologue TT!

Myagmarsuren Baasaankhuu and Anne Stegehuis have started the 2019 Granfondo Yunnan how they left it last year: as winners. Both won their prologue time trial. The Mongolian won by an impressive margin over Josh Bauer and Evgenii Vitmanovskii, making it clear who will once again be the man to beat. Stegehuis also had a 10 second bonus over an amazing Olivia Ghisoni and Marg Fedyna.

The 6th edition of Granfondo Yunnan started in beautiful weather conditions with temperatures rising even to 30 degrees in the afternoon. Most of the favourites for the overall victory decided to start in the afternoon, but a few opted for the early morning. Artsiom Rusanenka from Belarus set a first target time and he was in the hot seat for a while until Kunming’s Li Junggang smashed it to record a 14:54, the first rider to go under 15 minutes on the 8.6 km long and twisty course with a proper uphill of 1.3 km at the end to the “SIlver Pagoda”. The youngster, who finished 4th last year, also had plenty of time in the hot seat until Russia’s Evgenii Vitmanovskii beat his time by 14 seconds! People were wondering if that was going to be it, especially when Lithuanians Elijus Civilis and Marius Ratkevicius failed to do better than Vitmanovskii. But the last two starters of the day underlined their ambitions for this year’s Granfondo Yunnan. American Josh Bauer went two seconds faster than Vitmanovskii to set 14’38” and Mongolian Myagmarsuren Baasaankhuu followed up immediately to come into the finish with an incredible time of 14’16”! The four-time-winner of GF Yunnan is clearly going to be once again the man to beat this year.

The women’s hot seat changed many times throughout the day. Li Si was the first reference time of 18’54”. Yang Liping and Wang Xueli then bettered Li Si’s time shortly after one another. Then came the astonishing AG50 rider from Canada, Marg Fedyna, who took 20 seconds on Wang Xueli. While Chi Chaoyuan and Chelsie Tan managed to get themselves in the top five, Olivia Ghisoni and last year’s Granfondo winner Anne Stegehuis demolished the time of Fedyna by 40 and 30 seconds respectively.!

Davide Cassani was 5th in the AG50 in a time of 17’08”. Another former professional, Danny in’t Ven from Belgium, won the age group in 15’50”.

Unofficial results:

http://results.racetimingsolutions.com/Results.aspx?CId=16387&RId=6304