After a slow start, Sacha Modolo (Lampre-Merida) is living up to his tag as the sprint favourite in the Tour of Hainan as he made it two in a row by winning stage 4. After a long 237km stage, he held off Brenton Jones (Drapac) and Benjamin Giraud (Marseille) in a bunch sprint which was enough to take both the stage win and the overall lead.

The stage covered 237km from Haikou to Chengmai and was the longest of the race. Despite such a long distance, there were lots of riders willing to go on the attack. Many breakaway attempts occurred early on, but eventually the leading group was formed after 30 kilometers of racing. Tomas Vaitkus (Rietumu – Delfin), Mohd Zamri Salah (Terengganu Cycling Team), Meiyin Wang (Hengxiang Cycling Team), Andriy Khripta (Ukraine) and Jianpeng Liu (Hengxiang Cycling Team) were part of that action. The peloton was in no hurry and let them gain 12 minutes of advantage.

After covering 200 kilometers, the gap dropped to under 2 minutes and the bunch sprint finish was inevitable. The escapees were reeled in with 19 kilometers to go. The fight at the head of the bunch began as the sprinters’ teams were positioning themselves – it was Novo Nordisk, Astana, Skydive and CCC Sprandi Polkowice who set the pace.

The group entered the final straight led by Sacha Modolo’s Lampre-Merida team. The Italian finished off the work by beating Brenton Jones and Benjamin Giraud.

The win was enough to take the leader's jersey off Andrea Palini's shoulders. Modolo now leads his compatriot by 9 seconds as he goes into stage 5 which is another flat affair.