Gree-Tour of Guangxi stage 3: Olav Kooij triumphs in chaotic sprint

Olav Kooij (Jumbo-Visma) safely navigated his way through a chaotic finale to take a dominant sprint victory on the third stage of the Tour of Guangxi.

The Dutchman, who finished outside the podium on the opening two sprint stages, successfully surfed wheels in the bunch before launching a vicious kick in the final two hundred metres to take a dominant victory.

Left in Kooij’s wake, Rick Pluimers (Tudor Pro Cycling) surprisingly finished second, with Marijn van den Berg (EF Education-EasyPost) rounding out the all-Dutch podium in 3rd.

Jonathan Milan’s (Bahrain Victorious) tenth-place finish wasn’t enough to hold onto the leader’s jersey which he handed over to Dries De Bondt (Alpecin–Deceuninck) after the Belgian rider took bonus seconds earlier in the day.

Tough city circuit fails to foil the sprinters

The third stage of the Tour of Guangxi was expected to be one of the decisive days, with riders tackling a 25km city circuit five times. Each circuit included 1.4km ascent which, with average gradients of 11.7%, was expected to provide a launchpad for attacks.

The race for the general classification started early as Dries De Bondt (Alpecin-Deceuninck) embedded himself in the six-man breakaway for the second day in a row, alongside Julius Johansen (Intermarché-Circus-Wanty), Jens Reynders (Israel-Premier Tech), Frederik Wandahl (Bora Hansgrohe), Lukas Pöstlberger (Jayco-AlUla) and Petr Kelemen (Tudor Pro Cycling).

De Bondt started the day only four seconds behind Jonathan Milan (Bahrain Victorious) in the overall standings and his mission was to hunt out bonus seconds, which he successfully achieved as he amassed six throughout the day to propel into the lead.

Behind, the peloton kept the breakaway on a tight leash before it was eventually swept up on the final climb as Ineos Grenadiers set a punishing pace. That ended the chances of their own sprinter, Elia Viviani, but importantly didn’t shed many of the other fast men, with Milan, Olav Kooij (Jumbo-Visma) and Arnaud De Lie (Lotto Dstny) all in the select lead group that contested the finale.

De Lie was soon also out of the equation for the win after crashing in the final 3km, as Ineos Grenadiers led the bunch into the final kilometre. With his teammates running out, Ethan Hayter (Ineos Grenadiers) was forced to launch his sprint early but he was soon swamped by the pack.

Everyone appeared to be evenly spread across the road in a closely contested finish until Kooij rocketed through the middle to cruise to his fourth WorldTour victory of the season.

Milan only needed to finish in the top three to recapture the overall lead from De Bondt but he did well to finish upright having narrowly avoided a crash in the final two hundred metres to finish tenth.