Tour of Guangxi Women

The Tour of Guangxi Women is a WorldTour one-day bike race held in October in Guangxi, southern China. Launched in 2017 alongside its men's counterpart, it was raced around Guilin and its karst hills until 2023 and moved to a circuit in Nanning in 2024.

The Tour of Guangxi Women is a one-day race in southern China that was first held in 2017 and joined the Women’s WorldTour in 2018. Its first four editions ended in sprints in Guilin, and the two after that were held on a circuit in Nanning with a steep climb, where two-rider breakaways won.

A women’s race beside the men’s Tour of Guangxi

The race came out of an agreement between the UCI and Wanda Sports, part of the Chinese group Dalian Wanda, to develop cycling in China. The agreement created the men’s Tour of Guangxi, a six-day WorldTour stage race, and promised a new women’s race alongside it from 2017, with an application to join the Women’s WorldTour in 2018. The UCI’s annual gala moved to Guilin under the same deal. In its first editions the women’s race was held on the last day of the men’s tour, and in 2017 it shared the men’s start and finish.

Sperotto wins the first edition in 2017

The first race, in October 2017, was 110 kilometers long and was called the Tour of Guangxi Women’s Elite World Challenge. Leung Wing Yee of Hong Kong tried a lone escape and was caught, and the race ended in a bunch sprint. Maria Vittoria Sperotto, a second-year professional with BePink, narrowly beat Amy Cure and Lucy Garner of Wiggle High5. Wiggle High5 had started with three riders against BePink’s five. “It is my first victory as a professional, and it can be a motivation to take more victories,” Sperotto said.

Sierra wins in the rain as Guangxi joins the Women’s WorldTour

In 2018 the race became the last round of the Women’s WorldTour and grew to 145.8 kilometers. The first 86 kilometers were flat, two classified climbs followed, and a flat 30 kilometers led back into Guilin. In fog and pouring rain the climbs cut a peloton of 71 starters to about 30. Hannah Barnes led the sprint until the final meters, when Arlenis Sierra of Cuba came past her for a first one-day win in the Women’s WorldTour.

Hosking wins and Vos takes the 2019 Women’s WorldTour title

The 2019 race decided the season-long Women’s WorldTour. Annemiek van Vleuten led the standings by five points but was not on the start list, and Marianne Vos, second in the standings, was. Vos’s CCC-Liv team set the pace on both climbs and split the peloton twice, but the race still came down to a bunch sprint. Chloe Hosking won it ahead of Alison Jackson and Vos. Third place was more than enough to give Vos the overall title.

The return to Guilin in 2023

The race was not held from 2020 to 2022 because of the pandemic. It came back on October 17, 2023, on a 144.6-kilometer course that was flat apart from two climbs in the second half. Daria Pikulik won the sprint ahead of Chiara Consonni and Mia Griffin. She had also won the first race of that Women’s WorldTour season, the opening stage of the Tour Down Under.

There was no live broadcast, although the UCI required at least 45 minutes of live coverage from a Women’s WorldTour race. The 2019 race had not been shown live either.

Qingxiushan and the Nanning circuit

In 2024 the race moved to Nanning, the capital of Guangxi, and onto a circuit. The riders covered five laps of 27.2 kilometers in temperatures above 30 degrees Celsius, and every lap climbed Qingxiushan, or Qingxiu Mountain: 1.4 kilometers at 11 percent.

Giada Borghesi attacked with 35 kilometers to go, and only Sandra Alonso could follow. Both had teammates in the group behind who disrupted the chase, and the lead grew to more than two minutes. Alonso stayed on Borghesi’s wheel through the last kilometer and came past with 175 meters to go for her first Women’s WorldTour win. Her teammate Marta Lach won the sprint for third, 2 minutes 49 seconds later.

The 2025 race was shorter: four laps, 108.5 kilometers and 1,273 meters of climbing. On the last ascent of Qingxiushan, a little over 20 kilometers from the finish, Anna Henderson and Caroline Andersson rode away from a front group of 12. They shared the work to the finishing straight, where Andersson led and Henderson came off her wheel to win. “I was super good on the climb so I could attack twice,” Henderson said. A group of six sprinted for third nearly a minute later, and Usoa Ostolaza took it. It was Henderson’s second Women’s WorldTour win, after a stage of the Giro d’Italia Women earlier that season.

This race offers something rare on the women's calendar: a late-season one-day race in Asia. Its first four editions, in Guilin, ended in sprints. Since the move to Nanning in 2024, the steep Qingxiushan climb on every lap has split the field, and both editions there were won from two-rider breakaways. Anna Henderson won in 2025 after attacking twice on the climb. The race sits at a calendar moment when some riders are chasing final results and others are winding down, which adds an edge of uncertainty to the tactics.