Tour of Guangxi: Mas takes the stage and the overall lead

Enric Mas (Deceuninck - Quick-Step) climbed to victory on stage 4 of Tour of Guangxi as the Spaniard out-paced Daniel Martinez (EF Education First) and Diego Rosa (Team INEOS) on the uphill finish to Nongla Scenic Area.

As the sprinters had no say in today’s final, Mas is also the new leader of the race and thereby in prime position to take the overall win with two flat stages left to go.

For the fourth day in a row, a small group of just three riders managed to distance the peloton. Ryan Mullen (Trek-Segafredo), Meiyin Wang (Bahrain-Merida) and Hamish Schreurs (Israel Cycling Academy) worked well together but ultimately, Mullen took off alone with about 50 km to go. The Irishman built up a gap of over five minutes on the peloton but as the teams of the pre-race favorites began to chase, the gap quickly came down. As the riders took on the last 17 km, it was all back together again.

From here on, the pace was kept high all the way towards the final climb, starting with about 5 km to go. Remi Cavagna (Deceuninck - Quick-Step) was the first rider to attack, letting his team captain, Mas, stay sheltered in the pack, saving energy. Cavagna managed to stay away for a few kilometers but he was inevitably caught just before the KOM sprint.

Always in control, Mas followed every move before he finished off the hard work of his teammates by out-sprinting Martinez on the final 100 meters to take the win.

Tomorrow’s stage 5 is expected to end in another bunch sprint. However, with a couple of climbs in the last third part of the stage, some of the sprinters may have problems staying in contention.

You can watch all the action from the stage on Velon’s social media channels. For more information, click here.