No stopping Paul Magnier at Tour of Guangxi as he makes it three wins in a row on stage 3

Paul Magnier (Soudal-Quickstep) continued to rule the sprint on stage 3 of the Gree-Tour of Guangxi, crossing the line in Bama with a celebration of his third victory in a row.

It was another perfectly played out sprint for the unchallenged race leader. Magnier crossed the line ahead of Jordi Meeus (Red Bull-Bora Hansgrohe) and Max Kanter (XDS Astana) on the 213.5km stage 3, the longest of the race.

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Stage 3 of the Tour of Guangxi kicked off from Jingxi under the coolest temperatures of the race so far, close to the Vietnam border, but with the longest stage of the race ahead of the remaining riders – 214km up to Bama.

An attacking start saw several moves launched by the likes of KOM leader Peter Øxenberg (Ineos Grenadiers), but he was unable to make it into the eventual group of five that enjoyed an advantage off the front.

That breakaway was made up of Ryan Mullen (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), Ryan Gibbons (Lidl-Trek), Simon Guglielmi (Arkéa-B&B Hotels), Liam Slock (Lotto) and Li Zhen (China). After 150km of racing, three of them still remained out in front after a long holding period, with Mullen and Zhen dropping back to the peloton.

Soudal-QuickStep continued to pace as they’d done for much of the third stage, alongside XDS Astana and Picnic PostNL, hoping to make it a hat-trick of wins in just three days for Magnier.

Slock and Guglielmi eventually got dropped, leaving the soon-to-retire Gibbons alone in front until the 20km to go marker, where he was eventually caught back too. The South African was awarded the most combative rider of the day for his efforts.

Despite three categorised climbs arriving in the final 50km of the stage, none really provided enough of a launchpad for the punchers to challenge the pure sprinters, with the pace being kept too high.