Gree-Tour of Guangxi is the final WorldTour race of the season. The third edition of the six-day Chinese race took the riders on a sprinter-friendly parcours around the southern part of China. The 135.6km-long route around Beihai consisted of three laps of the port city with three small climbs along the way, which, however, would not pose any significant challenges. Immediately after the start, a trio went clear, but the field remained attentive and didn’t let the elastic snap on this group, which was only able to attain an advantage of around two minutes. Shane Archbold was consistently active at the head of the peloton, and the gap to the leaders was down to a minute with 45km remaining. A few kilometres later, a soloist escaped from the leading trio, but the field was once again onto this move, and his attack remained in vain. Shortly afterwards, several riders attempted to break free from the peloton, but BORA – hansgrohe rode actively at the head of the peloton, with the German champion Max Schachmann countering many of these attacks. With 10km remaining, two riders escaped from the field and managed to gain a slight advantage, but back in the main field, the sprinter teams took up the chase in earnest and that attack again remained fruitless. The opening stage came down to the expected bunch sprint, and in the finishing straight, F. Gaviria managed to find the wheel of Pascal Ackermann. After a strong lead-out from Rudi Selig, the German sprinter was ahead with 300m to go, but was ever so slightly nipped at the line by the Colombian rider.
Result
01 F. Gaviria 02:53:42
02 P. Ackermann +0:00
03 M. Trentin +0:00
04 P. Bauhaus +0:00
