Gree-Tour of Guangxi 2025 Stage 3

October 16, 2025 Stage three from Jingxi to Bama offers a bit more variety than we have seen in previous days. It's a long day too at 214KM and at this point in the season, physical and mental fatigue will be setting in. The first half of the stage is mostly false flat downhill with intermediate sprints in Baidang at 177KM to go and Tianyang at 58KM to go. From Tianyang, the route gradually goes back up with three categorized climbs along the way. The first is 2.8% which isn't much more than a false flat uphill but it is 9.5KM long. The second climb is 1.7KM at 5.8% with 34KM to go followed by the final climb which is 1KM at just under 4% and tops out 13KM from the finish. The sprinters should make it over these hills and we could see a third stage win for 21 year old Paul Magnier in the city of Bama which is home to the most centenarians in the world. Humidity was still high as was the temperature as the riders rolled out of Jingxi in the shadows of the highly unique Karst mountains. At the first intermediate sprint, Jhonatan Narváez of UAE-XRG picked up 3 more bonus seconds in his bid for the overall. The bunch wanted another sprint so Picnic-PostNL, XDS-Astana, and Soudal Quickstep were pulling to keep a four man break in check. The break away consisted of Liam Slock of Lotto, Ryan Gibbons of Lidl-Trek, Simon Guglielmi of Arkéa-B&B Hotels, and Zhen Li of the Chinese National Team. With 47KM to go, Li had dropped and the three remaining leaders had 2 minutes on the bunch as they approached the penultimate KOM. Guglielmi had taken the first KOM earlier in the day. At the bottom of the second with 36KM to go, the peloton had closed in to 30 seconds so Guglielmi attacked to try and grab the additional points. Gibbons followed and sat on until 50M from the top when he accelerated to take maximum points in front of Guglielmi. Gibbons carried on for a while but waived the white flag and was hauled back with 21KM to go. XDS-Astana led up and over the final KOM with the bunch still together. The washing machine was full churn with 5KM to go. Wide roads and high speeds made it difficult to hold position and nearly every team hit the front at some point before being swarmed and pushed back. Picnic-PostNL led through 1KM to go with Jayco AlUla and Cofidis well positioned. It was Picnic-PostNL that had the best train and the other sprinters hopped on. Unfortunately for Pavel Bittner, he was dropped off way too early and had to start sprinting at 250M while the others sat in behind. Stanisław Aniołkowski of Cofidis was first to come around which slightly boxed in Paul Magnier. Magnier was able to elbow his way out and when he opened up, he proved once again that he is the fastest sprinter in the race and made it three stages and three wins. Jordi Meeus of Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe made a good challenge but it was only good enough for second place on the stage. Max Kanter of XDS-Astana rounded out the podium in third with Aniołkowski in fourth.