Jai Hindley takes stage win and race lead at Tour of Fuzhou

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With Australia’s Jai Hindley, 21, and Hong Kong’s Fung Ka Hoo, 20, youth has taken over at the Tour of Fuzhou. The Australian won stage 4 of the race and moved into the lead with one stage remaining, while Fung Ka Hoo has moved into second place overall.

The youthfulness of the standings is contrast with last year when Iranians Rahim Emami, 35, and Ahad Kazemi, 41, made it a 1-2 in the queen stage before being both banned for seven and half and eight years respectively for their second doping offense. Hindley moved into the lead in the overall ranking.

“It’s a big relief to finally get a result in China for the team. It’s really important. I knew it was going to be steep in the last five kilometers. I knew I had to wait until then and go full gas in the steeper sections of the climb, see who’d come with and it paid off in the end. I gave everything until the end. I’m really happy. It feels nice to get my first cat.1 UCI victory.”

The favorite for the Queen stage, Venezuela’s Yonattan Monsalve (Qinghai Tianyoude), had a deficit of 1:45 to make up after suffering from jetlag on stage 1. As breakaway riders Aiman Zariff (Terengganu), Daniel Habtemicheal (Eritrea), Chiu Ho San (Hong Kong), Polychronis Tzortzakis (RTS-Monton) and Serghiy Grechyn (Hainan Jilun) were caught at the bottom of the final climb with 15km to go, Monsalve rode away with Marcus Culey (St-George continental) and continued solo 9km before the finish. He created a 40-second gap but after five kilometers of being alone in the lead and looking like he made the decisive move, he was rejoined by yellow jersey Mykhaylo Kononenko (Kolss), runner up Stanislau Bazhkou (Minsk), Hindley (Mitchelton-Scott), Fung (Hong Kong), Drew Morey (Terengganu TSG) and Francisco Colorado (Ningxia).

With Kononenko struggling in the steepest sections, Hindley opened the gas. Only Bazhkou and Fung could follow him. “I said since stage 1 that Kononenko would be dropped up here,” Bazhkou declared.

“But the young guys were too strong for me. When it flattened a bit, I couldn’t follow them. I had checked on Hindley’s results so I’m not surprised about his win.”

The big sensation was Fung. Not only did he ride on a defensive mode as he cautiously wanted to, but he attacked with 500 meters to go before being passed by Hindley. “This was my best race since I started cycling,” said Fung, the 2015 Asian champion for U19 individual time trial. With an advantage of four seconds over the Hong Kong rider and fifteen on Bazhkou, Hindley is one stage away from his category 1 stage race victory before joining Sunweb for the next three seasons.

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