Hat-trick for unstoppable Magnier on stage 3 at Tour of Guangxi
It's three from three so far for the Frenchman in China, at the final UCI WorldTour stage race of the season.
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Paul Magnier (Soudal-QuickStep) continued his remarkable run of form to seal stage 3 of the Tour of Guangxi after a strong sprint in Bama. The race leader outsprinted Jordi Meeus (Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe) and Max Kanter (XDS Astana) to continue his clean sweep of stage wins so far in the 2025 edition.
Magnier has also extended his overall lead to 20 seconds over Kanter in 2nd, courtesy of the seconds he picked up for winning his third straight stage.
In the wider picture, it's Magnier's 17th victory of the 2025 season, with only the World champion, Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), holding more with 20. Despite having only lined up for three stages in his career in Guangxi, Magnier is already up to 2nd in the list of most stage wins at the race, only trailing Fernando Gaviria (Movistar), who has 6.
How it unfolded
At 214km, stage 3 from Jingxi to Bama was the longest of the race, but that did nothing to temper the early speed, with the peloton averaging over 50kph for the first two hours of racing.
Mattias Skjelmose, one of the favourites for overall victory, abandoned the race before the midway point, reducing his Lidl-Trek team’s complement still further after Simone Consonni and Bauke Mollema departed on stage 2.
The early pace meant that it took some time for a break to gain real traction, but Liam Slock (Lotto), Simon Guglielmi (Arkéa-Samsic), Ryan Gibbons (Lidl-Trek), Ryan Mullen (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) and Zhen Li (China) escaped after 60km.
Li and Mullen would later drop out of the move, leaving Gibbons, Slock and Guglielmi to tackle the more rugged terrain in the finale at the head of the race. Guglielmi would lead over the first two classified climbs of the day, but the peloton was drawing inexorably closer on the road to Bama, with Picnic-PostNL joining Soudal-QuickStep in the pursuit of the escapees.
In the end, when the escapees were reeled in, it was the man of the moment who delivered once again when it mattered most, to maintain a 100% win rate at the Tour of Guangxi.
Result: 2025 Tour of Guangxi stage 3
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