Known as a sprinter, Niccolo Bonifazio knew that he was in for a tough day in the saddle if he wanted to defend his overall lead in the queen stage of the Tour of Hainan. By finishing third, he did better than expected but still had to relinquish the lead to stage winner Julien Antomarchi.

As it was predicted, Niccolò Bonifazio had to say goodbye to his leader's jersey in the queen stage of the Tour of Hainan (Dongfang-Wuzhishan, 199.3km). However, he made a top performance that allowed him to finish third on the stage and remain in third in the overall standings.

The neo-pro from Lampre-Merida reached the finish 39" after the winner and new leader Julien Antomarchi who beat his brekaway companion Andrey Zeits by 1 second. In the overall classification, Bonifazio is 35 seconds behind.

“Today, my team has worked very well until the last climb and I’m quite happy with my performance uphill but it wasn’t enough for keeping the lead”, the young Italian said. “It was a question of legs. The two strongest riders have made it. Now I’ll defend the green jersey and I’ll target the second place overall.”

Sports director Simone Pedrazzini described the race:

"Three 1st category climb were not suitable for Bonifazio but despite this, Niccolò did a very impressive performance. Thanks to Bono and Xu Gang we succeeded in avoiding attacks in the run-in to the final climb whose summit was located 11 km from the finish. On the climb, Mori set the pace in the group and limited the gap to Antomarchi and Zeits to 1 minute after they had escaped on the lower slopes of the climb. On the descent to the finish, Bonifazio could minimize the gap and he finished third.

The overall classification is no longer a target, but we'll try to defend the third place and the points classification in which Bonifazio is 1st and Palini is 2nd."