Tour of Guangxi: Groenewegen wins opening sprint

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Dylan Groenewegen (LottoNL-Jumbo) won the first stage of the Tour of Guangxi, taking the first red leader’s jersey of the WorldTour race.

The Dutch sprinter beat Max Walscheid (Team Sunweb) and Fabio Jakobsen (Quick-Step Floors). France’s Arnaud Demare (Groupama-FDJ) was only seventh but is expected to challenge Groenewegen in the other four sprint stages.

Gianni Moscon (Team Sky) and Pete Kennaugh (Bora-Hansgrohe) attacked on the final climb of the 107.4km stage around Beihai. They opened a 20-second gap but were brought back by the sprinters’ teams.

The opening 107.4km stage served as a warm-up for the rest of the race and chance for the riders to shake out the jet-leg and fatigue after a long journey from Europe. The stage covered a large circuit twice, with the only categorised climb coming 13km from the finish.

The early break formed after 15km with Silvain Dillier (AG2R La Mondiale), Andrey Grivko (Astana), Jay Thomson (Dimension Data), Marco Haller (Katusha-Alpecin), Pavel Sivakov (Team Sky) and Yusif Mirza (UAE Team Emirates) flying the flag for their respective WorldTour teams. Despite the Tour of Guangxi being a so-called ‘new’ WorldTour race and so participation not obligatory, all the 18 WorldTour teams travelled to China for some end of season racing.

The sextet opened a gap of 1:30 but the sprinters’ teams kept them under control on the wide, fast roads, with Groupama-FDJ and LottoNL-Jumbo doing the work for Demare and Groenewegen.

After the first lap the break’s lead was down to 45 seconds and fell gradually after that. They were caught before the final climb and so Kennaugh and Moscon tried their hand. The Manxman finished third at last week’s Tre Valli Varesine race, while Moscon was fifth at the World Championships after recently completing his ban for striking out at Elie Gesbert (Fortuneo-Oscaro) during the Tour de France.

The two worked well together and opened a 20-second gap on the peloton but the sprinters’ teams were not going to miss out and the peloton came back together with five kilometres to go.

LottoNL-Jumbo and Groupama-FDJ lead out the high-speed sprint, with Groenewegen using his raw power and speed to hit the line first and so take his 14th victory of the 2018 season.

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