After yesterday's stage win, there was no double glory for Niccolo Bonifazio. The Italian relinquished his lead in the Tour of Hainan after just a single day while his Lampre-Merida teammate Andrea Palini leads the points classification.

At the Tour of Hainan, Lampre-Merida again finished in the top 5. The third stage of the Chinese race was won by Kazakh Arman Kamishev who beat Maksym Averin and Wouter Wippert in the sprint while Andrea Palini finished 5th and Niccolo Bonifazio was 8th for the Italian team.
 

The stage was marked by a breakway of 16 rider, including the Chinese Meiyin Wang who scored enough bonus seconds to take the lead in the overall standings.

“For sure he deserves the yellow jersey”, points classification leader Palini commented. “When he attacked for chasing the time bonus, it wasn’t easy considering the high rhythm of the race. There’s no doubt he’ll do everything he can to keep the jersey. Maybe he’ll go for more intermediate sprints but we’ll also look for time bonus, although it’ll be in the final sprints until stage 7 where we’ll see how well Wang can climb.”
 

After this intermediate sprint in Zhipo Town (km 65), five riders broke clear: Floris Goesinnen and Jordan Kerby (Drapac), Artyom Zakharov (Vino4ever), Milan Kadlec (Dukla Praha) and Samir Jabraylov (Baku). They got a gap of two minutes and gave a hard time to the chasing peloton. “It’s been a fight between us and Belkin”, Palini acknowledged. We didn’t want to let any of them going in a breakaway because we wanted to find some help in the finale but we ruined our strength and we lacked manpower with 2km to go. On the other hand, Astana got well organized and was left with lead out riders.”

“I remained boxed in”, Bonifazio said. “The strong side wind was the source of a mistake. I rode too far right.”

Palini is still second in the overall standings (0.02 behindWang) and has retained the leader's jersey in the points classification while Bonifazio is down to 5th position in the same time as Palini.