Dylan Groenewegen out-sprints Gaviria for Stage 5 win in Guangxi

LottoNL-Jumbo sprinter Dylan Groenewegen avenged his opening stage defeat to Fernando Gaviria (Quick-Step Floors), who went on the claim three straight, and outmuscled the field including the Colombian in a vicious headwind for a fifth-stage win at the Tour of Guangxi in Guilin, China on Monday.

“With 1k to go we had my team LottoNL-Jumbo and Quick-Step on the right side and Gaviria was there, and I thought I would follow him,” the 24-year-old Groenewegen explained to Eurosport. “Then he was going with 200 metres to go. I waited for 50m because there was a headwind, so I could go a little bit later and that was enough.

“The first three stages I was disappointed,” he continued. “I had a mechanical problem in the first stage and second stage I was not good enough, so I am happy today I could get the win.”

The hilly penultimate stage featured four categorised climbs over the 212.2-kilometre route from Liuzhou, but according to Australian Will Clarke of Cannondale-Drapac, who was one of three riders in a sustained break, the race was made more difficult by the headwinds and pacing rather than the reported 2,474m in elevation gain, which was more like “1,400m” according to the 32-year-old Tasmanian’s on-board bike computer.

“It was a pretty aggressive start, probably jumped in about 20 breaks before I got away,” Clarke told Eurosport. “It was only a small break [with] a bit of a headwind always, so not that easy really.

“[Total elevation] was a bit off again, but it was still pretty hard in the last sort of 50, 60k.”

Queen stage winner Tim Wellens (Lotto Soudal) remains in the red leader’s jersey he lifted from Gaviria on Sunday, and sits six seconds atop Dutchman Bauke Mollema (Trek-Segafredo) and 11 over Irishman Nicolas Roche (BMC Racing) with a final 168.1km city circuit stage remaining.

Clarke and Fabricio Ferrari’s (Caja Rural-Seguros RGA) break-mate Daniel Oss (BMC Racing) is the new mountains classification leader and was named most ‘active rider’ on the day.

“It was a good day, it was a pretty hard start, full gas almost 50km/h for first hour,” said Oss, who won two of the four KOMs. “The road got smaller and rolling and was good to try. I saw the parcours and the KOM and calculated some points and why not try … now I’m here."

For full stage and race results click here.