Gree-Tour of Guangxi 2025 Stage 4

October 17, 2025 The stages are getting harder and today might just be hard enough that the full peloton doesn't come to the finish together. There are four categorized climbs totaling 2,400M of elevation gain on the 177KM route between Bama and Jinchengjiang. Three of the four climbs come in the first half of the stage and each are between 3KM and 5KM at 6%. The last categorized climb crests at 37KM from the finish and it too is 4KM at 6%. The wildcard in today's stage is where the bonus sprint sits. At just 12KM from the finish, the organizers cleverly placed the bonus sprint on top of an 800M, 7% rise. It could be a spring board for an opportunistic attack but may be too long for just two or three riders to stick it to the finish. KM0 came as the course turned on to the banks of the Panyang River where Simon Guglielmi of Arkéa-B&B Hotels was the first attacker. Five riders joined Guglielmi in the break including Logan Currie of Lotto, Stan Dewulf of Decathlon AG2R, Michael Valgren of EF-Education EasyPost, Michael Leonard of Ineos, and Juan Pedro López of Lidl-Trek. They had a considerable lead of 3 minutes 10 seconds with 56KM to go as they entered the village of Jiuxi. Soudal Quickstep believed in the chances of Paul Magnier once again so they were riding along with XDS-Astana, Picnic-PostNL, and UAE-XRG. The break hit the final KOM with 41KM with a reduced lead of 1 minute 45 seconds. Soudal Quickstep looked to be losing riders but they still had Josef Černý pulling on the climb. By the top, Černý was gone but UAE-XRG wanted to control and they had the gap under 1 minute. Černý returned on the flatter roads heading towards the bonus sprint and with 25KM to go, the gap was trimmed to under 30 seconds. UAE-XRG looked like they wanted to bring the break back before the sprint and the pressure from the peloton forced the break to speed up which split the group. Currie and Dewulf were the last two remaining but their lead was coming down fast. Currie dropped off with 14KM to go and Dewulf was caught 200M before the uphill bonus sprint line. Once again, Jhonatan Narváez of UAE-XRG had the legs to pick up maximum seconds at the bonus sprint for a total of 7 seconds gained so far in the first four days of racing. The peloton was largely in tact at the top and another bunch sprint was looking likely. Young, powerful Niklas Behrens of Visma-Lease a Bike went on the attack over the top and built a lead of around 10 seconds which he held until 5KM to go but the collective force of the peloton was too much and the German was brought back. Groupama-FDJ came to the front with five men but they went too hard for too long and burned their squad and had no lead out left by the 1KM to go banner. Jayco AlUla and Intermarché-Wanty were best organized and it was the Jayco AlUla train that everyone was fighting to latch on to. Max Walscheid was the designated sprinter for Jayco AlUla so he had prime position coming into 300M. On his left hip was Paul Magnier who was fighting with Paul Penhoët of Groupama-FDJ for Walscheid's wheel. Magnier was in the wind for a long time until he finally started his sprint only around 100M from the line. It looked like a seated sprint from Magnier but he still managed to outlast everyone to take his fourth win in a row and, incredibly, the thirteenth win out of the last sixteen race days. Pavel Bittner of Picnic-PostNL and Jordi Meeus of Redbull-Bora Hansgrohe were queued up behind Magnier but all they could do was follow which brought them a second and third on the stage respectively.