Tour of Guangxi: Enric Mas wins stage 4

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Enric Mas (Deceuninck-QuickStep) won stage 4 of the Tour of Guangxi, triumphing on the steep slopes to the Nogla Scenic Area hilltop finish. The Spaniard, who beat Dani Martínez (EF Education First) and Diego Rosa (Team Ineos) into second and third places, takes over the race lead with two stages remaining.

The win, Mas' first this season, was the result of some stellar teamwork by the Belgian squad, with teammate Rémi Cavagna going on the attack earlier on the climb. The Spaniard then struck out later on, going clear on the new, steep section after the old finish to record his first win of 2019.

Mas now leads Martínez by five seconds on the general classification in his final race for QuickStep. Rosa lies in third, 14 seconds back.

How it unfolded

Soon after the start of the race in Nanning, four riders got away from the peloton, with home rider Wang Meiyin (Bahrain-Merida) joined out front by Hamish Scheurs (Israel Cycling Academy), Jay Thomson (Dimension Data) and Ryan Mullen (Trek-Segafredo).

On the queen stage of the race, the quartet were never likely to get much leeway from the peloton, and so it proved as the break's advantage reached a maximum of five minutes before Deceuninck-QuickStep got to work in the peloton after two hours of racing.

After the second intermediate sprint of the day, 105km into the race, Mullen pushed on alone to leave his breakaway companions behind and go for glory.

Five minutes back, Astana, QuickStep and EF Education First were among the teams working at the front of the peloton, with Mullen's advantage slowly whittled away as he rode past the strangely shaped hills of the Guangxi countryside.

With 20km to race, the Irishman's advantage had been cut to under a minute, a sign that the it was almost time for the climbers to get to work. He nabbed the 'most active rider' award but was caught before the 10km to go mark.

Riders were quickly strewn down the road as the peloton hit the lower slopes of the climb, up to the old finish, with only around 30 men remaining as Rémi Cavagna (Deceuninck-QuickStep) struck out 3km from the line.

The Frenchman was caught on the flat section of the old finish though, setting up a grand finale on the steep slopes of the final 1.5km. Antwan Tolhoek (Jumbo-Visma) was first to attack the rapidly diminishing group, but soon has Mas and Martínez on his wheel.

On the latter section of the climb, which several riders have claimed to have had little information on beforehand, it was those who bided their time who reaped the rewards, with Mas and Martínez going clear on the run to the line. It was then up to Mas to seal victory, his first of 2019 at his final race of the season.

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