Matevž Govekar (Bahrain Victorious) won the final stage of the Gree-Tour of Guangxi, claiming the sprint from a reduced peloton while Lennert Van Eetvelt (Lotto-Dstny) secured the overall victory by finishing among the lead bunch after stepping into the red leader's jersey on Saturday's summit finish.
Marijn van den Berg (EF Education-EasyPost) came second in the hard-fought final stage race of the WorldTour for 2024. He just held off Robert Stannard who made it two riders for Bahrain-Victorious on the podium in the 134km stage 6, run over five loops punctuated with a category 2 climb.
Van Eetvelt came over the Nanning finish line in 25th place, safely within the lead bunch of over 30 riders, on a dynamic day of racing where little was left settled until the final stages.
The young Lotto-Dstny rider, however, played his cards with aplomb to successfully make both his first and last WorldTour races of the year general classification winning outings.
"Starting in the leader's jersey on the last day is always stressful. You know that everyone will ride against you, but it is also great to be able to ride in that jersey," Van Eetvelt said later. "Before the start, we said that no one from UAE Emirates was allowed to join the breakaway, certainly not Tim Wellens and Pavel Sivakov."
"In the end we decided to let Tim go, to try to control him afterwards. I think that was the right decision. The boys rode very strongly and luckily we also got some support from DSM-Firmenich PostNL. That made it possible to keep the break within range. There were also a lot of attacks after the last climb, but I still felt very good myself. It's great to still be able to do this on the last day.
"If you had told me before the start of the season that I would win one WorldTour race, I would have been very happy. But to win two, that is– I don’t really think about it, but I can be more than happy with this."
The 23-year-old Belgian also swept up the youth classification, claiming both the red and white jersey ahead of Oscar Onley (dsm-firmenich-PostNL) while Ethan Vernon (Israel-Premier Tech) held onto the points jersey win by just one point.
Pepijn Reinderink (Soudal-Quickstep) clinched the mountains classification, which for a while looked at risk after a throw of the dice from second-placed Tim Wellens (UAE Team Emirates) was neutralised just as the final points were within sight.
How it unfolded
There were 117 riders lined up for the final stage of the last WorldTour race of the season on Sunday, a number of the 129 starters missing due to crashes earlier in the event, but with a last chance at a top-tier victory for 2024 at stake, the competition was still as fierce as ever.
The circuit around the capital city of Guangxi, which the riders would tackle five times, included a category 2 climb – 1.4km with an average gradient of 11.7% – each lap. The King of the Mountain points were up for grabs on the first, third and fifth lap while the intermediate sprints fell on laps two and four.
Van Eetvelt had started the day with a five-second lead on the overall classification to second-placed Oscar Onley (dsm-firmenich PostNL), while in the points competition Ethan Vernon (Israel-Premier Tech) was sitting on 38 points, nine ahead of Max Kanter (Astana-Qazaqstan). Pepijn Reinderink (Soudal-Quickstep) got to line up in the polka dot jersey again, with 28 points in mountain classification and Tim Wellens (UAE Team Emirates) was next with 20, which meant all were still in play on the final day.
When the flag dropped it was immediately a fast and furious competition. The first KOM points at 5.9km – 8, 4 and 2 – were swept up by Rémi Cavagna (Movistar), Pavel Sivakov (UAE Team Emirates) and Max Poole (DSM Firmenich-Post NL). Then it wasn’t long before there was a break and a split in the peloton that Van Eetvelt managed to stay on the right side of.
Wellens jumped into a break of eight and with two KOM points opportunities to go it’s no surprise that Reinderink was among those who went off in pursuit of the rider who was in second place in the mountains classification that he was leading.
The Soudal-Quickstep rider, however, didn’t make the junction and it was around a minute gap to the lead group with 100km of racing remaining. The group included Wellens, Amanuel Ghebreigzabhier (Lidl-Trek), Tosh Van der Sande (Visma-Lease a Bike), Stan Dewulf (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale), Michael Leonard (Ineos Grenadiers) and Esteban Chaves (EF Education-EasyPost).
Wellens swept up the top sprint points at 52.4km into the day of racing but he didn’t manage to repeat with the KOM points at 60km, with Dewulf and Ghebreigzabhier cresting ahead of him and leaving just two points for the third-placed Wellens. However, there was still another opportunity to bridge the points gap if Wellens could hold on at the front for the final climb at around 20km to go.
By the halfway point of the final day of racing in the WorldTour for 2024, the gap was closer to two minutes, though that was before the pace heated up in the peloton. A group of riders losing touch also formed out the back, Reinderink among it, meaning there was little he could do to counter Wellens in his pursuit of the final mountain points.
The gap between the leaders and the peloton was down to 45 seconds by the 33km to go. By the final climb the lead group was in reach, caught at 20km to go and with that junction went Wellen’s chance to capture the mountains classification.
The field was splintering on the climb, but Van Eetvelt was ever attentive at the front, determined not to let his hard-earned overall lead slip at the final pass. Sivakov swept up the final lot of 8 KOM points, with Van Eetvelt second and Alex Baudin (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) third.
There were attacks, but none that lasted and it was now a drastically reduced peloton heading to the line for the final time, with little more than 30 riders still in contention as the kilometres ticked under 5 to go.
There were attempts to get a jump but in the end, it came down to a spread-out sprint, with Bahrain-Victorious making their presence felt at the front. Govekar dashed out from Van den Berg’s wheel at just the right moment to claim his first WorldTour victory while Stannard crept up behind to take third, hitting the podium for the first time since his return to the peloton in September.
Sunday’s stage completed the WorldTour season for 2024, with the Tour Down Under opening up the new season on January 21, 2025.
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