Relegation, redemption and the WorldTour's quiet finale - Tour of Guangxi preview

If the falling leaves of Lombardy forever mark the symbolic end of the cycling season, then the Tour of Guangxi serves as a sort of epilogue. For some, it’s a last chance saloon to secure a contract for the following season. For others, it’s a rare opportunity to lead or chase victory. And for many more, it’s simply a final fixture to fulfil before the long campaign draws formally to a close.

A few weeks ago, Juan Ayuso said the quiet part out loud when he revealed that he had won a wager with UAE Team Emirates-XRG to avoid the trip to China. By winning a pair of stages of the Vuelta a España, the Spaniard was spared duty at the Tour of Guangxi.

A cursory glance at the provisional start list certainly shows that the field at the Tour of Guangxi is decidedly light on star names relative to the rest of the WorldTour calendar. That doesn’t mean the race is without intrigue, but it’s just not necessarily the intrigue the UCI or the local organisers had in mind when the race was first placed as the grand finale to the WorldTour schedule in 2017.

Ahead of this year’s Tour of Guangxi, the headline stories had less to do with the race itself than with the bigger picture in professional cycling. The race was initially due to serve as a test for the UCI’s planned new rules on restricted maximum gears, but the potential flashpoint was averted when the Belgian Competition Authority upheld SRAM’s appeal against the test.

The Tour of Guangxi is also a key battleground in the fight to avoid relegation from the WorldTour, though the precise parameters of that contest have not yet been established. 

As things stand, Cofidis will race in Guangxi desperately seeking to scoop up points to overhaul Uno-X Mobility in the rankings and save their WorldTour status. Uno-X are not present in China, but they can still add to their tally at the Giro del Veneto and Veneto Classic, meaning Cofidis are chasing a potentially moving target.

And, to complicate matters further, if the planned Lotto-Intermarché merger falls through, then the question is moot, and Cofidis’ efforts would already be in vain. In other words, the relegation battle still won’t be officially resolved after the final stage in Nanning.

While Cofidis dispute their long-distance contest against Uno-X, a number of notable riders in the Tour of Guangxi peloton will be fighting their own battles simply to remain in the game for another season. Sam Bennett (Decathlon-AG2R), Fernando Gaviria (Movistar), and Dan McLay (Visma | Lease a Bike) are among those still to confirm a team for 2026, while riders from Lotto, Intermarché-Wanty and the disbanding Arkéa-Samsic are also sweating on their futures.

And while some riders are fearing they have reached the end of the road, others will arrive in Guangxi already looking to the future. Cian Uijtdebroeks makes his final appearance in Visma colours before leaving for Movistar, while Matt Dinham (Picnic-PostNL) continues on the comeback trail after his long, long layoff. 

In the midst of all those narrative strands, there’s a serious bike race to be contested, and there are some on-form riders travelling to China with obvious ambitions. Paul Magnier (Soudal-QuickStep) has been in imperious form in recent weeks, and it would be a surprise if the Frenchman didn’t add to his tally of sprint wins here. 

Lidl-Trek travel with a notably deep team, and Mattias Skjelmose is surely the favourite for final overall victory after his fourth-place finish at the Rwanda World Championships. The evergreen Pello Bilbao (Bahrain Victorious) will also sense a chance to convert his usual consistency into a victory against this field.

It would be a surprise, too, if UAE Team Emirates-XRG didn’t make an impact, even if the absence of sprinter Juan Molano might prevent the team from racking up 100 wins for the season. Even so, riders like Jan Christen and Rui Oliveira will look to make an impression.

Now in its sixth edition, the Tour of Guangxi is professional cycling’s latest and most sustained attempt to establish a foothold in China. The process began thirty years ago this month, when China was undergoing rapid change as Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms gathered pace.

American promoter Medalist Sports sensed an opportunity and devised the first Tour of China, an ambitious project that saw pro riders from top European squads racing on the streets of Hong Kong, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Beijing.

It was a different time. Title sponsorship came from British American Tobacco, while the race took place against a backdrop of China’s construction boom, and the late Sam Abt wryly noted the fervent construction of skyscrapers: “The national bird is apparently the crane.” 

Viatcheslav Ekimov won a maiden edition that featured Gianni Bugno, while Michael Andersson of Telekom claimed the second, but the race died when that iteration of Medalist Sports disbanded shortly afterwards.

The 2008 Beijing Olympics presented another opportunity, not least because former UCI president Hein Verbruggen was chair of the coordination commission. The Tour of Beijing was born in 2011 as a legacy event of the Games, and it lasted for four editions that drew fields of reasonable strength, with Tony Martin, Dan Martin and Philippe Gilbert among those to shine. 

The UCI itself was essentially the race organiser through its GCP arm, but when Brian Cookson took over as president in 2013, the event was quietly shelved. Alain Rumpf, who had overseen the Tour of Beijing, maintained the decision was a short-sighted one. “It was a huge opportunity missed by the whole sport to keep this race going and build on it,” he said earlier this year. 

WorldTour racing eventually returned to China in 2017 with the Tour of Guangxi, though the UCI is not directly implicated as the organiser. The race instead came into being after an agreement was struck between the governing body and the vast Dalian Wanda Group, with Infront Sports & Media providing technical staff from the Tour de Suisse. 

Tim Wellens won the first event in 2017, and the UCI looked to cement the event’s status as the denouement to the WorldTour by holding its annual gala in Guilin on the final night of the race, though that addendum would be discontinued when the Tour of Guangxi took a three-year hiatus from the international calendar due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The race eventually returned in 2023, though the field was notably weaker than the old Tour of Beijing and, indeed, less star-studded than the initial three editions of the Tour of Guangxi. Twelve months ago, the decision was taken to change the route, but it has done little to alter the sporting complexion of the race. This year, once again, we can expect a succession of bunch sprints to be broken up by the short hilltop finale in Nongla, which is always the decisive GC day, as Lennert Van Eetvelt demonstrated last year.

Like the Tour of Beijing before it, the Tour of Guangxi has never provided a grandstand finale to the year, but there are still plenty of riders with plenty to race for in China this week. The season is already over for most, but 2020's cycling is relentless that way.