Image 1 of 9
Olav Kooij swept up victory on stage 6 at the Tour of Guangxi, winning the final hard fought sprint of the WorldTour season, as his Jumbo-Visma teammate Milan Vader claimed the overall win.
The Dutch rider, who was celebrating his 22nd birthday, shot up to the right of Ethan Hayter (Ineos Grenadiers) who had launched early in canny move that nearly stole a march on the top sprinters.
It looked like the British rider was leading out Elia Viviani as he came out of the final corner but then his Italian teammate left a gap and Hayter got the jump.
Despite having to make up some serious ground, Kooij caught and overtook Hayter on one side while stage 5 winner Juan Sebastián Molano (UAE Team Emirates) passed him on the right to finish second.
Hayter finished third and the six-second time bonus lifted him to third overall.
Vader was the overall winner, with Remy Rochas (Cofidis) second but Hugh Carthy (EF Education-EasyPost) was knocked off the podium by Hayter.
The final WorldTour race of the year also played out in Guilin alongside the final Women’s WorldTour race of the year, with the Tour of Guangxi Women won by Daria Pikulik earlier in the day.
How it unfolded
At this point, it wouldn’t feel like a stage of the Tour of Guangxi at all if Dries De Bondt (Alpecin-Deceuninck) wasn’t in the break and, sure enough, the indefatigable Belgian was aboard the early move in the company of Jens Keukeleire (EF Education-EasyPost), Oscar Onley (Team dsm-firmenich) and Jens Reynders (Israel Premier Tech).
The quartet quickly struck up a working alliance, building an advantage of 2:20 by the first intermediate sprint, enough to put…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at CyclingNews RSS Feed…