NANNING, China, Oct. 17 -- German Pascal Ackermann of Bora-Hansgrohe on Wednesday clocked 3 hours 18 minutes and 58 seconds to claim stage 2 of the 2018 Gree UCI WorldTour Tour of Guangxi.
For the 145.2km stage from Beihai to Qinzhou, German national champion Pascal Ackermann outsprinted Fabio Jakobsen from Quick-Step Floors and Dylan Groenewegen from Lotto NL-Jumbo, making it his ninth victory of his breakthrough season.
The 23-year-old Dutchman Groenewegen made the triple winner of red, blue and white jerseys, as the overall individual leader, the best sprinter and the best young rider respectively.
Silvan Dillier of Team BMC kept the green jersey in the stage.
During the stage, a mostly level road with three sprints, five riders found the way to escape from the peloton at 8km: Remi Cavagna, Alex Dowsett, Yousif Mirza were first to go clear, rejoined pretty quickly by Andrey Grivko and Feng Chung Kai. There was no reaction from the peloton. They reached a maximum time gap of 2m15s after 20km. Five kilometers further, a slight rain added to the difficulty already made by the three quarters head wind.
It became a pouring rain after 50kms and it would almost not cease until the end of the stage. However, the racing conditions didn't affect the motivation of the breakaway riders although they were kept on a leash by teams Lotto NL-Jumbo, Bora-Hansgrohe and Sunweb.
Cavagna showed a great determination at the front. Mirza who escaped for the second straight day was the first to surrender just after 100km. Feng was next to drop back to the pack at 110km before Grivko did so as well with less than 20km to go. Cavagna carried on and left Dowsett behind with 10km remaining.
Only 4km before the line, Cavagna got reeled in. He was naturally awarded the most active rider of the day. Ackermann launched his sprint from far out on the left side of the road while Groenewegen made his effort on the right. The 24-year-old from Germany collected one more WorldTour victory for his account after winning stages at the Tour de Romandie, the Dauphiné and the Tour de Pologne.
The third stage of the Tour is a level-road circle race in the city of Nanning on Thursday.