Tour of Guangxi: Moscon wins stage and takes race lead

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Team Sky's Gianni Moscon took a solo victory on stage 4 of the Tour of Guangxi on Friday, taking the overall lead in the final WorldTour race of the season with two stages left to race.

The Italian attacked hard on the three-kilometre climb to Mashan Nongla, winning alone, five seconds ahead of Felix Großschartner (Bora-Hansgrohe), with Astana's Sergei Chernetckii a further three seconds back, as the six-day stage race in China took on a much tougher route than the previous three stages, which have all finished in bunch sprints.

As expected, overnight leader Fabio Jakobsen (Quick Step Floors) dropped out of contention for the overall classification and, with time bonuses taken into account, Moscon now leads Großschartner by nine seconds, and Chernetckii by 14 seconds.

The stage win is Moscon's fourth win of the season after recent victories at the Coppa Agostoni and the Giro della Toscana one-day races last month, and at the Italian time trial championships earlier this month.

"We were all full gas and I saw the other riders were really tired and I thought ‘now is the moment’," Moscon said. "I didn’t think about it, it was just a feeling. I attacked and straight away had a small gap which I held to the end."

Moscon and Team will now try to defend the race leader’s red jersey during the final two days of the Tour of Guangxi. Saturday’s 212km fifth stage five to Guilin includes consecutive 3.3km and 4.6km climbs just 35km from the finish.

"I think the most important thing was winning today, of course but tomorrow’s stage is long and pretty hard, with some long climbs. I expect a big battle tomorrow but I have a strong team with me," Moscon said.

How it happened

After three consecutive sprint stages in city centres and on wide flat roads, many riders in the Tour of Guangxi peloton were happy to head out into the Chinese countryside north of Nanning for the 152km stage to Mashan Nongla.

The early attacks were chased down as the race left Nanning but Stefan Küng (BMC Racing), Pascal Eenkhoorn (LottoNL-Jumbo) and Roger Kluge (Mitchelton-Scott) were let go as the skyscrapers were replaced by fields and curious farmers.

An early 7.3km climb cracked Kluge, who dropped back to the peloton but Kung and Eenkhoorn pushed on and opened a maximum lead of 3:20 as the peloton and overall contenders waited for the three-kilometre climb to the finish.

EF Education First-Drapac lead the chase in defence of Rigoberto Uran’s chances for the finish, while Trek-Segafredo also helped to set-up Gianluca Brambilla. Later, Quick-Step Floors also gave a hand, with Davide Martinelli doing some huge turns on the front.

Kung and Eenkhoorn lead by 1:30 at the final intermediate sprint but the chase became serous in the final 15km. kung tried to hold off the peloton as long as possible, even with a final solo attack in the final five kilometres. However, he was caught with three kilometres to go, just as the gradient kicked up.

The climb quickly blew apart the peloton, with 40 riders remaining up front. Pete Kennaugh (Bora-Hansgrohe) tried to anticipate the final attacks but then Moscon stamped his authority on the race and showed his end of season form with a determined attack with one kilometre remaining.

His rivals could only try to limit their losses before the line, with Großschartner the best of the rest at five seconds, with Chernetckii a little further back after trying to stay with Moscon. Just behind were Carlos Verona (Mitchelton-Scott) and Uran, while Astana had three riders in the top 10, with Luis Leon Sanchez sixth and Davide Villella ninth. 

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