Elia Viviani (Ineos Grenadiers) claims stage 1 victory at Tour of Guangxi(Image credit: Getty Images)
Jayco-Alula at sign on(Image credit: Getty Images)
Heading to the start line(Image credit: Getty Images)
Off and racing(Image credit: Getty Images)
Stretching out the field(Image credit: Getty Images)
Michael Leonard (Ineos Grenadiers) pours on the pressure(Image credit: Getty Images)
The early break of four which got away after 14km, Dries de Bondt (Alpecin Deceuninck), Louis Barré (Arkea-Samsic), Omer Goldstein (Israel-Premier Tech) and Frederik Wahndal (Bora Hansgrohe)(Image credit: Getty Images)
Elia Viviani (Ineos Grenadiers) bridged a four-year gap to his last WorldTour victory as he won the opening stage of the Tour of Guangxi ahead of his compatriot Jonathan Milan (Bahrain Victorious) in a bunch sprint in Beihai.
Milan opened his effort from distance, but Viviani, guided through the finale by Jonathan Narvaez, powered past in the final 150m to claim the honours. It was Viviani’s second victory of the season as his recent triumph at the CRO Tour.
Sam Bennett (Bora-Hansgrohe) made a late charge but had to settle for third place, while Arnaud De Lie (Lotto-Dstny) took fourth ahead of the fancied Olav Kooij (Jumbo-Visma) in a bunch sprint of considerable depth.
The fast men could have as many as four more opportunities before the race is out, but Viviani was eager to make the most of the momentum he had picked up in Croatia last month. It was the Italian’s third win on Chinese roads after he claimed a pair of victories here over a decade ago at the now-defunct Tour of Beijing.
“After four years, I’ve won in the WorldTour again and that’s beautiful,” said Viviani, whose last triumph at this level came at the EuroEyes Cyclassics Hamburg in 2019.
The short and largely flat opening stage of the Tour of Guangxi was always going to provide a bunch sprint, and Viviani was able to count on some robust support from Ineos in the finale, with the team seizing the initiative on the wide roads in the final 3km.
“We went for one of those classic tactics where you look a bit stupid if it doesn’t work out, but in the end it worked out perfectly for us,” Viviani explained. “3km from the finish, we were still towards the back, but all together, and then we made one move to the right and went to the front from there.
“Obviously when you have riders liked Ethan Hayter and Luke Plapp, you can stay in front for a long time. Coming off the last corner, I understood it might be the right day because we were on Milan’s wheel, and we knew it would be a long sprint.”
Milan, like Viviani, is a man who toggles freely between road and track, and he has long acknowledged the debt he owes to the trail laid down by his compatriot. “I’m happy that Elia was the one who passed me rather than anybody else,” Milan smiled when he made his way through the mixed zone after the podium ceremonies.
In the overall standings, Viviani carries a lead of four seconds over Milan into stage 2, with Dries De Bondt (Alpecin-Deceuninck) third at six seconds thanks to the bonuses he picked up as part of the day’s break.
How it Unfolded
The typhoon that swept across the Gulf of Tonkin in recent days had mercifully subsided by Thursday morning, with the Tour of Guangxi peloton waking to blue skies and pleasant sunshine for the opening day of the race in the port city of Beihai.
The opening stage was always liable to end in a sprint, but one of the day’s contenders was ruled out before the race got underway. Sam Welsford, like his DSM teammate Andreas Leknessund, was a non-starter due to illness.
Another fast man, Gerben Thijssen, was withdrawn from the event on the eve of the race together with his Intermarché-Circus-Wanty teammate Madis Mihkels for their part in a lamentable act of racism shortly after arriving in China.
Despite those absences, there was still a sizeable coalition of sprinters’ teams in the race, and the odds of a breakaway going the distance were negligible on the largely flat circuit around Beihai. No matter, Dries De Bondt (Alpecin-Deceuninck), Frederik Wandahl (Bora-Hansgrohe), Louis Barré (Arkéa-Samsic) and Omer Goldstein (Israel Premier-Tech) forged clear on the first of three laps, building an early lead in excess of a minute.
The only mild ad lib to the day’s script came from Julius Johansen (Intermarché-Circus-Wanty), who bridged up to the break shortly before the midpoint before a mechanical problem forced him out of the move and back to the bunch.
Behind, Jumbo-Visma and Lotto-Dstny were among the teams leading the pursuit on behalf of the day’s favourites Olav Kooij and Arnaud De Lie, and the peloton took the bell just under a minute down on the leaders. By then, Barré had dropped out of the move, leaving De Bondt, Goldstein and Wandahl to press on, but it was already clear that the day would end with a bunch sprint.
15km from the finish, shortly after Wandahl swept up the day’s last mountains points on the lone, category 3 ascent on the circuit, the leaders were finally swept up, and the scene was set for the sprint finale.
Barry Ryan was Head of Features at Cyclingnews. He has covered professional cycling since 2010, reporting from the Tour de France, Giro d’Italia and events from Argentina to Japan. His writing has appeared in The Independent, Procycling and Cycling Plus. He is the author of The Ascent: Sean Kelly, Stephen Roche and the Rise of Irish Cycling’s Golden Generation, published by Gill Books.
