Road Cycling

Wiggle High5 Prepare for Chongming Island

The team gets ready to race in China, and Dani King shares her travelling experiences

Professional women’s cycling teams have been making their way over to Chongming Island, China for the next round of the Women’s World Tour.

With a brilliant start to the season already, Wiggle High5 are preparing to take on the multi-day event. With a fairly flat terrain, the Chinese stage of the World Tour will work to the strong team’s advantage.

Since her debut in 2009, experienced cyclist Chloe Hosking will be leading the team in this stage. Hosking says: “It’s a great race for development, and Wiggle High5 is going there with a young team so it will be a good opportunity for our younger girls to have a solid hit out and really try and have a major impact on the race.”

With a strong sprint squad in the Wiggle High5 team, it’s going to be nothing but excitement to watch these women race at the weekend.

Pro Cyclist Travels

“So far, I’ve raced 22 times this year in 5 different countries taking multiple flights!” – Dani King, Wiggle High5

Amongst the formidable force of women, Dani King has been sharing her travelling experiences as she makes it over to the Asian stage of the tour.

In her travelling blog update, Dani explains just how much travelling is involved being a professional athlete: “As a female pro cyclist, I travel hundreds of thousands of miles each season from race to training camp to race then back home for a few days and then off to the next race and so on. So far, I’ve raced 22 times this year in 5 different countries taking multiple flights! With the amount of travelling us Wiggle High5 riders do it’s important that we protect our equipment- most especially our Colnago bikes which need to ideally arrive race-ready.”

The Wiggle High5 race team are using their new custom Scicon AeroComfort 2.0 TSA bike bags for their world travels. Having to dismantle and reassemble your bike on a regular basis can be a chore, but Dani shows off her love for Scicon’s travel assistance:

“The handlebars, seat-post and saddle all stay in place which is great if you’ve had a bike fit and don’t want to mess up your settings. My bike took 15 minutes to pack from start to finish, even including packing more than just my bike into the bag!” With her bike carefully packed and packed out with foods, kit and energy bars, Dani is well and truly ready for the China stage.

The Chongming Island race will be Dani’s first trip to Asia, and the first stop of her round the World trip. Having packed her Scicon bike bag full of food, Dani’s preparing to take this stage by storm.

Once the Chinese stage is completed, “I’ll be heading to California for one of the races I’ve most been looking forward to this year! Tour of California! It’s a four day stage race including one of my favourite disciplines of cycling – a team time trial.” This will take place on May 19th – 22nd, make sure it’s in the diary.

With a heavy travelling and cycling schedule, it’s no wonder that Dani is looking forward to getting back home to her own bed for some much needed rest and relaxation.

A word from Rochelle

Having led the women’s pro cycling team since their debut in 2013, Team Manager and Rochelle Gilmore gave us an insight into the upcoming Chongming Island race: “The racing in China has always been very important to our team, as we’re traditionally known as a sprint team and have some very fast athletes.

We’ve sent a team very capable of winning the China round of the World Tour. Lucy Garner is coming into form after a top result at the Tour of Yorkshire, and she’ll have Chloe Hosking by her side, also capable of taking the win in China. I’m confident in the team we’ve sent there.”

The team is looking good, feeling positive and ready to take on the next stage of the World Women’s Tour.

With a strong sprint team and young riders raring to go, the Chongming Island stage of the Women’s World Tour will make quite the watch.