Niccolo Bonifazio continued his breakthrough performance in the Tour of Hainan when he won stage 8 of the Chinese race. The Italian had gone into the stage with two goals: another stage win and to move into second in the overall standings.

When there's an opportunity for a sprint, Lampre-Merida tends to monopolize the scene in the Tour of Hainan. Today the team took its fourth win in the Chinese race when Niccolo Bonfazio won stage 8.

The 20-year-old rider again did a perfect sprint and finished the job by holding off Jonathan Cantwell and his teammates Andrea Paini and Roberto Ferrari.

Bonifazio moved into second place in the overall standings, 22 seconds behind leader Julien Antomarchi and 3 seconds ahead of Andrey Zeits. The victory was the 27th for Lampre-Merida in 2014 and the 6th for Bonifazio.

"Today we had two goals: the stage victory and the second place in the overall classification that we could take by virtue of bonus seconds," Bnonifazio said. "The race was very frantic form the beginning because there was a 1st category climb in the early kilometres and an intermediate sprint just after the descent. I stayed calm, I was able to get back to the front on the descent I won the intermediate sprint and scored 3 bonus seconds.

"Then a breakaway led the race until 10km to go when the efforts of Bono, Xu Gang and the Pomme Marseille 13, the team of leader Antomarchi, caught them after a long chase. As usual Ferrari gave me the perfect support for the sprint and Palini perfectly protected my wheel so I only had to focus on reaching the highest possible speed to win the stage and move into second in the overall standings.

“It went well today. I thought the stage would be with no major difficulty but it turned out being a difficult day of racing with a hill to start with, the rain and some attacks. Until 15km to go, there was a breakaway and a rider from CCC Polsat counter attacked but my team-mates Matteo Bono and Xu Gang brought him back. Manuele Mori did the last bit of work until Roberto Ferrari delivered us, Andrea Palini and myself, 150 metres from the line. It was nice to have this long straight finish. It has helped me a bit because I didn’t have great legs.”