Introducing Jai Hindley
Chinese fans enjoyed watching the finale of stage 6 with Xue Fuwen being part of a chasing group riding strongly behind lone leader Alexis Cartier. He’s a member of Chinese-registered team Mitchelton-Scott, a feeder team for Orica-Scott that aims at developing Chinese talents. The squad also features up and coming climber Jai Hindley who will be a neo pro with Team Sunweb next year.
In a couple of years, it might be interesting to recall that Hindley has been part of the history of the Tour of Hainan, shall he develop as experts believes he will since he came fifth of the Tour de l’Avenir at the age of 20 last year. “I’ve had a pretty good first half of the season this year, I had decent results and I carried some good form”, the Western Australian from Perth said at the start of stage 6, referring to the second place overall at the Herald Sun Tour in February (with defending champion Chris Froome finishing sixth), the victory at the u23 Terra Toscana stage race in April and the third place (plus one stage win) at the amateur Giro d’Italia in June.
It enabled him to secure a neo pro contract early with Team Sunweb so it was no drama when he fell during the rest day of the Tour de l’Avenir. However, he still managed to finish tenth while helping Lucas Hamilton (4th). Along with Michael Storer and his two team-mates at the Tour of Hainan Rob Stannard and Sam Jenner, these guys are the new generation of Australian super talents.
“Sunweb has a really good development process”, Hindley noted. “It’s a good step up, well organized. In a long term, I think it’ll be good for me. I might target some stage races with them. I’m definitely a climber. The longer the hills are, the better I am.”
Talking about stage 7 to Wuzhishan, he said: “We’re gonna put our legs in that basket and try to set it up, go hard in the [last] climb, although we don’t know how hard the climb is. We’re here to try and get the team some exposure in Asia. It’s a good experience to race with Chinese riders in the team. Communication is not easy but we make the best of our cooperation. They’re pretty good. They help a lot. They’ve been getting bottles and stuffs for me, Rob and Sam all week. They’ve been good at riding in the wind and so on.”
