Tour of Hainan: Mosca continues Wilier Triestina success

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Italy's Jacopo Mosca delivered a surprise victory in the queen stage of the 12th Tour of Hainan, continuing the winning streak of the Wilier Triestina team after five stage wins by Jakub Mareczko. Mosca also moved into the lead with a three-second advantage over Benjamin Prades (Ukyo) and eight seconds over Mykhaylo Kononenko (Kolss) and Marc De Maar (Hengxiang).

"It's unbelievable," Mosca reacted in Wuzhishan. "I've never been used to raising my hands up in the air. Even in the amateur ranks I wasn't often a winner. To win a race in my first pro year is really beautiful. It's an unexpected victory but a very nice one. This morning, we started with Kuba [Mareczko] in the leader's jersey. We had two weapons, either help him to hold onto the yellow jersey or sneak into the breakaways and make the best of it, which is what I've done eventually."

19 riders composed a breakaway group after ten kilometers, including Enrico Barbin (Bardiani CSF), Martin Laas (Delko Marseille), Marc-Antoine Nadon (H&R Block), Luke Mudgway (RTS-Monton), Sam Crome (IsoWhey Sports-Swisswellness), Vitaly Buts, Oleksandr Polivoda and Andriy Bratashchuk (Kolss), Rob Stannard (Mitchelton-Scott), Jacob Rathe (Jelly Belly), Meiler and Der Zsolt (Vorarlberg), Jon Aberasturi and Prades (Ukyo), Radoslav Konstantinov (Hainan Jilun), Rick van Breda and Sven van Luijk (Monkey Town), Dylan Page (Swiss national team) and Mosca.

Crome won the battle against polka dot jersey wearer Buts for the KOM competition as he crested three summits out of four in first position. "Being down to four riders, we knew it would be hard for GC so we targeted something else and we got the KOM jersey," Crome explained. Polivoda was focused on the intermediate sprints. The maximum time gap was four minutes after 40km.

Wilier Triestina led the peloton most of the time but keeping a gap of two minutes, it was unclear whether they wanted to bring the breakaway back or not. The answer came with 20km to go when race leader Mareczko went to his team car behind the peloton to bring bottles for his teammates. "I did it because every day they have worked for me," Mareczko commented.

"Today, it was no longer necessary to keep the race under control, as we had Mosca at the front and we were pretty sure he could do well since we realized in the past few days that he's in a great form with the way he could help me. I wasn't able to hold the pace in the last climb so I let it go and I saved energy for the last two days."

It all came down to the last climb whose summit was 12km before the finishing line in Wuzhishan. Crome attacked with Prades. Barbin, Mosca and Polivoda reacted. Prades and Mosca forged on while Marc De Maar (Hengxiang) attacked solo from the peloton and made it across. The Dutchman attacked with 2km to go and again with 500 metres to go but didn't manage to drop his two rivals. "I knew I wasn't going to win the sprint," he admitted. Mosca did. He had more resources as it wasn't up to him to pull in the front group at the difference of the Spaniards from Ukyo.

"I'm sad because I've had many second places this year," Prades said. "I won the Tour de Taiwan but I really wanted the win here. I was racing for the stage win more than for the GC today. I don't think there are many options to take the yellow jersey. Wilier are very strong."

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