"A lot of attacks went from the start, big breaks, and we tried to go too, to make the race harder, If Ruslan had gone to the finish we might have seen something."

Those were the words of Astana's Dmitriy Gruzdev after stage five at the Tour of Hainan. Gruzdev and his teammates spent the final kilometers of the race working for Ruslan Tleubayev to put him in the best position for the upcoming sprint finish on a slight hill.

Bakhtiyar Kozhatayev and Valerio Agnoli went in breakaways to decrease the pressure on their teammates and break up the peloton on the hilliest day of the the 2015 Tour of Hainan.

At 700m to the finish a large crash blocked Tleubayev and Daniil Fominykh, with both riders receiving heavy scrapes, while most of the peloton remained isolated from the sprint won by Benjamin Giraud of France.

In spite of their injuries, Tleubayev and Fominykh both plan to start stage six on Sunday, a 174km race to the main tourist island of Sanya.