Tour of Guangxi 2024 Stage 1

October 15, 2024 The final World Tour race of the season takes the peloton to South East China, very close to Vietnam. The first stage is a flat circuit race with 4 laps of 37KM on wide open highways. Stan Dewulf of Decathlon AG2R and Rune Herregodts of Intermarché-Wanty went up the road and had 2 minutes 20 seconds with 60KM to go. It was a hot and humid day and Herregodts was popped from the break with 22.5KM to go as Dewulf continued to forge on solo with a 2 minute lead. The chase was fierce to bring it all together and the catch was finally made just inside 3KM to go. The road was four lanes wide which made it impossible for one team to control. Lotto-Dstny and EF-Education EasyPost were most prominent but other teams were patiently sitting back. It was absolutely chaotic in the last 500M as riders had all the room in the world to move around to different wheels. From the head-on shot, it looked like there were at least ten riders to hit the line at the same time. No one initially put their hands up but it was confirmed shortly after that Lionel Taminiaux of Lotto-Dstny won the stage ahead of Gijs Van Hoecke of Intermarché-Wanty and Juan Sebastián Molano of UAE.