19-year-old Chen Yusheng surprises with Mt Zixi stage win

The short stage up Mount Zixi near Chuxiong Old Town led to both a spectacular and emotional race win for 19-year-old youngster Chen Yusheng, who crossed the finish line by himself while crying from joy. Chen Yusheng was the best of an elite group of 14 that split away from the main peloton in the lower sections of the Mt Zixi climb. As the kilometers went by, it looked for a while that was going to end in a sprint with nine, including yellow jersey Luke Chambers, but suddenly Li Pengcheng, amongst others, launched a big attack. That seemingly brought Chambers in difficulty as the South African reached the finish line "only" in 12th position and 2'14" down on the winner. As a result, his yellow jersey as GC leader was under severe threat. His five closest challengers after the Chengjiang stage were ahead of him. Li Pengcheng and Yang Zidong battled it out, as Wang Wen, Gong Bai Mo and Wu Bao Chao lost touch in the final kilometre. Entirely up front was young boy Chen Yusheng, who clearly surprised himself by attacking successfully and winning the Chuxiong stage by 14 seconds over Li Pengcheng. Yang Zhidong was third, 29 seconds behind, which means that he lost the yellow jersey chance to Li Pengcheng by a mere two seconds. Chen Yusheng was not a direct GC threat, having finished the Chengjiang stage in 8th place but more than four minutes down. Still, the Chuxiong stage showed that the battle for the overall classification in our 10th anniversary edition may be very tight in Lijiang this Friday.

The women's race was again won by yellow jersey Li Si, who already in Chengjiang showed to have great climbing legs this season. Today she had an advantage of 45 seconds over Li Xiong Pan, who lost ten minutes two days ago. Wang Yue was 2'14" behind in third, but in GC now also nearly 13 minutes down on Li Si. Qiu Yin and Canadian Evelyne Lacroix were fourth and fifth and Chen Xiaomei sixth in a sprint against Liang Yanqing.