"This stage was uneventful and short - much like you might expect to call a training ride ahead of what awaits us tomorrow."

Those were the words of Astana's Andrei Zeits after stage three at the Tour of Hainan. Zeits and his teammates passed the short, flat and windless day in a stage that finished with a mass sprint into Hainan's administrative and business capital city Haikou.

Bakhtiyar Kozhatayev finished in the Top-10 sprinters of the day, placing sixth behind stage winner Sacha Modolo of Italy.

Friday will offer the riders the longest stage of the 2015 Tour, with a 240km distance along tropical palm forests in the heart of the Chinese resort island Hainan.