After the day’s breakaway was dramatically caught in sight of the finish line in Wednesday’s second Tour of Guangxi stage, Jake Stewart recorded his best result of the season by placing third in the bunch sprint in Jingxi.
The British rider was narrowly beaten by Warre Vangheluwe (SOQ) and Max Kanter (AST), but the result was still two places higher than his previous best result in 2024: fifth on stage 5 of the Tour de Pologne.
After finishing fourth in Tuesday’s opening stage, Stewart’s compatriot Ethan Vernon came seventh.
He said: “It wasn’t the plan coming into today – we were trying to set up Ethan again for the sprint.
”The boys committed really well to the objective. Nadav [Raisberg] and Guy [Sagiv] did a great job in bringing the gap to the breakaway down. With 10 kilometers to go, it was still 30 or 40 seconds, so Riley [Pickrell] sacrificed himself to help bring them back. He did a great job there, and huge kudos to all of them for their work.”
A seemingly innocuous stage ended up being anything but, as eight riders – including IPT’s Chris Froome – attacked at KM0. Six of them made it to the long finishing straight, before being caught by a charging peloton. Stewart avoided a crash behind and was able to power towards the line, before he took the day’s final podium spot in what effectively became a seven-rider bike throw contest.
He adds: ”I found myself in a good position with 500 meters to go; I was third in line and saw that Ethan wasn’t with me, so I had to open up the sprint myself.
”I hoped to get a result for the boys there after they committed all day. I’m happy with third, obviously we’d have liked to have taken the win but we can be happy with how the legs are.”
