Yauheni Hutarovich (Bretagne) underlined his status as the fastest sprinter in the Tropicale Amissa Bongo when he took his third win in three days on the final stage of the race. It was even a 1-2 for the Bretagne team as his teammate Daniel McLay was second ahead of Morgan Lamoisson (Europcar) whil Rafaa Chtioui (Skydive Dubai) won the race overall after having taken the lead with a solo win on the opening day.

Going into the Tropicale Amissa Bongo, Yauheni Hutarovich was widely tipped to be the dominant sprinter of the 7-day race. However, the Belarusian got his race off to a difficult start as he was unable to sprint in the first two hilly stages and had to see his lead-out man Daniel McLay lead him home on stage 3. One day later he was beaten by Andrea Palini and so he went into the final three sprint stages with no wins on his account.

Since then, the Belarusian has been unstoppable. He finally got the ball rolling when he won stage 5 and after the evening team time trial, he was back in sprinting action in yesterday’s stage 7. Again he turned out to be the fastest and today he made his domination complete when he also won the final stage of the race.

The sprinters were again expected to shine on the final day that brought the riders over 127k from a start in Libreville around a small opening circuit and back to the main city. Here they ended the race by doing 15 laps of a flat circuit, setting the scene for an expected bunch sprint.

As always, Gabon greeted the riders with beautiful sunshine as they headed out for their final leg and as it had been the case in all stages, it was a very uncontrollable start to the race. Attacks kept coming in the opening phase and for a long time, no one was able to get a significant advantage.

At one point, Leris Moukagni (Gabon), Mohamed Amine Er Rafai (Morocco) and Metkel Eyob (Eritrea) had a 20-second advantage but after 60km of racing, it was all back together. Moments later, Salah Eddine Mraouni (Morocco) escaped and he managed to build an advantage of 54 seconds with 30km to go.

The peloton had now gone into chase mode and the lone Moroccan was brought back with 22km to go. That didn’t stop the attacking though and instead Bryan Nauleau (Europcar), Benit Jarrier (Bretagne) and Essaid Abelouache (Morocco) took off.

The trio never got much of an advantage and with 11km to go, they were brought back. Hence, it came down to the expected bunch sprint and here Hutarovich emerged as the fastest. In fact, he was brought into the perfect position by McLay who even managed to take second while Morgan Lamoisson completed the podium.

Rafaa Chtioui got safely though another stage and this meant that he broke the Europcar dominance of the biggest African race. After 5 consecutive wins, the French team had to settle for second with Giovanni Bernaudeau while Abdelkade Belmokhtar (Algeria) completed the podium.

Yohann Gene (Europcar) won the points competition while Bernaudeau could console himself with a win in the mountains competition. Bonaventure Uweizeyimana (Rwanda) was the best young rider while Skydive Dubai took a dominant win in the teams classification.

The European teams will now head back to Europe to focus on the major events while the UCI Africa Tour continues with three one-day races in Morocco on Thursday, Saturday and Sunday.