Place Name: 538000
Address: 538000, Gangkou Qu, Fangchenggang Shi, Guangxi, China
Details: October 14, 2025
Most of the peloton have hung up their wheels and are sitting on a beach somewhere but the season isn't over yet. The final World Tour stage race of 2025 takes place in the extreme Southern part of China, right on the border with Vietnam. Day 1 is a circuit race around West Bay in Fangchenggang. There are four laps with three climbs on each lap. The climbs are not too difficult, all of which are about 1KM long at 6%, and they come in the first half of the 38KM lap. The rest of the course is completely flat and we should see a sprinter take home the leader's jersey at the end of the 149 kilometers of racing.
As Western Europe heads into Autumn, Southeast Asia is blazing hot at 30C (86F) and humid which would be a shock for many. With 44KM to go, two riders were leading, pedaling down a four lane highway with 20-30 story buildings lining the road with the bay always over their left shoulder. Soudal Quickstep had young sprint phenom Paul Magnier on their roster and they were doing all of the work to keep Attila Valter of Visma-Lease a Bike and Mathis Le Berre of Arkéa-B&B Hotels within 1 minute. An intermediate sprint came with 38KM to go with sprint points and valuable time bonuses 3, 2, and 1 seconds on offer. Valter started his sprint first but Le Berre rolled the Hungarian on the line to take maximum points. In the peloton, Jhonatan Narváez of UAE-XRG won the sprint for the last remaining bonus second.
Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe took over the front of the bunch with XDS-Astana and Movistar sitting in behind. The break was caught with 22KM to go as the bunch carried on towards the finish. Teams were getting in color order but there was no sense in going too hard because the road was so wide that keeping position was impossible. Inevitably, the speed did pick up and with 5KM to go, teams were lined up for the drag race finish. Groupama-FDJ and Decathlon AG2R strung out the bunch through a corner with 2KM to go but their pace was way too hard and their lead outs burned away.
At 500M, riders were spread across three lanes as they looked for a bit of shelter from the wind. 100M later, a UAE-XRG lead out man did his job and tried to get out of the way but a teammate got his front wheel stuck on the wrong side. The wheels touched right near the front and down came at least 20 riders very heavily. Only about 10 riders made it through the melee and the first to sprint was Fernando Gaviria of Movistar. Max Kanter of XDS-Astana waited on Gaviria's wheel for a moment too long because Paul Magnier came out from behind like a shot. Kanter jumped from Gaviria to Magnier but it was too late to come passed Magnier who snatched the 15th win of his sophomore season. Kanter was good enough to take second with Jordi Meeus of Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe in third.
Tags: Tour of Guangxi, 2025, October, Stage 1, Gree-Tour of Guangxi 2025, Fangchenggang, Paul Magnier, Attila Valter, Mathis Le Berre, Fernando Gaviria, Max Kanter, Jordi Meeus