Astana a hot favorite for the tenth Tour of Hainan
Best Chinese cycling event returns Paradisiacal island from October 20 to 28
Still considered a young race on the international cycling calendar, the Tour of Hainan celebrates its tenth edition with the status of China’s premier bike racing event. Following the extinction of the Tour of Beijing, no other competition attracts Pro Teams like the one held annually at the end of the season with the UCI H.C. status on the Paradisiacal island of the China Sea.
After three overall wins by Astana with Valentin Iglinskiy in 2010 and 2011 and Dmitriy Gruzdev in 2012, Belkin’s famous clean sweep in 2013 with all nine stages and GC won by Moreno Hofland and Theo Bos from the Dutch outfit, Frenchman Julien Antomarchi of continental team La Pomme-Marseille stormed to victory over World Tour riders Niccolo Bonifazio of Lampre-Merida and Andrey Zeits of Astana last year.
Astana and Lampre-Merida return this year with strong line-ups along with new comers Trek Factory Racing. 20 teams from Italy, France, Kazakhstan, USA, Australia, Poland, Ukraine, Latvia, Malaysia, UAE and greater China will contest the nine-day event that features five first stages suitable for sprinters before the hillier part of the racing. Three category 1 climbs are set to split the bunch from Dongfang to Wuzhishan on stage 8 set to be the queen stage.
The 76km inaugural stage with start and finish in Wanning-Xinglong in front of the HNA Kangle theatre that hosted the magnificent teams’ presentation on the eve of the race might well suit Italian fast men Jakub Mareczko (Southeast), Sacha Modolo and Roberto Ferrari (Lampre-Merida), Andrea Palini (Skydive Dubai) who haven’t won a race recently at the difference of their compatriot Daniele Colli (Nippo-Vini Fantini) who just won the Tour of China I. The other sprinters in contention are Graeme Brown and Brenton Jones (Drapac), Ruslan Tleubayev (Astana), Benjamin Giraud (Marseille 13-KTM), Armands Becis (Rietumu-Delfin) and Boris Shpilevskiy (RTS-Santic).
With Zeits and Valerio Agnoli who is making his return to Asia after taking second place at Le Tour de Langkawi in Malaysia in March, Astana is the hot favorite on paper. “But we need the race to be hard for Astana to win”, said sport director Dimitri Sedun who noted the increase of some distances at the Tour of Hainan with 237km scheduled on stage 4. “Zeits is a very consistent rider. All year he performs well at the service of the team. I’d love to make him win but if he’s in a two-man breakaway, he’d usually ride too much before the sprint.”
The Tour of Hainan is known for creating surprises. It’s also a way to save a disappointing season. In that perspective, former Tour de France climbing sensation Rémy Di Gregorio is a candidate to succeed Antomarchi but the European teams who form the vast majority of the start list shouldn’t say once again that they don’t know about Hengxiang’s Wang Meiyin. China’s best cyclist has had a quiet season as well until he won stage 5 in the Tour of China I two weeks ago. The 26 year old from the Shandong province remains the only Chinese winning international bike races. Local fans expect a lot from him again in Hainan.
(by Jean-François Quénet)
