Mareczko takes revenge as Bayly saves leadership despite late crash

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Italy’s Jakub Mareczko of Wilier-Southeast took his third sprint victory at the Tour of Taihu Lake in China on Friday. The joy he expressed while he crossed the finishing line said a lot about the frustration the Italian felt when he lost stage four to Nicolas Marini and stage five to Michael Eduard Grosu. The Nippo-Vini Fantini finished second and third at Xitaihu Lake behind Mareczko.

“Compared the two previous day, we managed to make the team work really well”, Mareczko commented of his twelfth personal win of the year. “This is a good way to conclude the season. Today again it was windy on the finishing line, so I wasn’t sure that I’d win but my teammates helped me in such a way that I couldn’t lose.”

“We didn’t make any mistake, Kuba was just the strongest”, Marini admitted. “We couldn’t do any better.”

“It was a pretty different sprint from yesterday’s”, Grosu echoed. “It was more dangerous with curves and people coming from behind. With one kilometre to go, I lost Marini’s wheel because the team from Riga [Rietumu-Delfin] boxed us in on the right hand side. I had to brake and I starting sprinting from further back. There wasn’t any space for doing better. It’s a good result but seen from the outside, a stage win has much more value than second and third.”

Wilier-Southeast was the most active team behind the breakaway of the day that included Chris Williams (Novo Nordisk), Jan Krauss (Dukla Praha), Ronald Yeung (Wisdom-Hengxiang) and St-George-Merida’s Darcy Ellem-Norton from New Zealand who was awarded as the most aggressive rider for being at the front for the second straight day. They got caught with 20km to go, after which Brodie Talbot, also from St-George-Merida, showcased the pink colours of the team directed by Brett Dutton.

It was all together again when race leader Cameron Bayly crashed with seven kilometres to go. Escorted by three teammates after he jumped on Martz Alder’s bike, he made it back to the pack 4.5km before the finish.

“In a corner, someone came upon the inside of me, slid out or blew up and there was nowhere to go so I just hit the ground,” Bayly explained.

“Luckily I had a teammate behind me and he gave me his bike straight away. I managed to just get back on to the pack. I just have a bit of skin off and that’s it.”

The Australian might have an even more difficult task to defend his jersey during the seventh and conclusive stage, which is the equivalent of last year’s queen stage won by Marco Zanotti of Parkhotel-Valkenburg at the Maoshan Scenic Area where the history of Taoism goes as far back as 5000 years ago.

“Either way tomorrow is gonna be a hard day”, Bayly said of the lumpy terrain. “I’m still really excited. It’s gonna be an exciting race and I’m ready.”

Giuseppe Fonzi of Willier-Southeast and Leonardo Duque from Delko Marseille-Provence-KTM are the biggest threat to the orange jersey on what will be the last ever race of the Franco-Colombian who took part in the Tour de France on three occasions with Cofidis.