Nacer Bouhanni (FDJ) continued what has been a fantastic season when he won yesterday's important French autumn classic, Tour de Vendee. The French sprinter has now set his sights on more success in the Tour of Beijing.

The 2013 season has marked another step forward for young French sprinter Nacer Bouhanni who has won races throughout the entire year. He took his first victory in February on the final stage of the Tour of Oman and yesterday he added the 9th win to his tally in one of the final big races on French soil, Tour de Vendee.

The race is usually decided in a bunch sprint and several teams were intent on once again letting the fastest riders battle it out for the win. Bouhanni's FDJ team combined forces with Ag2r, Sojasun and Topsport Vlaanderen to gradually reel in Pavel Kochetkov (Rusvelo), Francesco Reda (Androni) and Pierre-Luc Perichon (Bretagne) and also controlled the late attack from defending champion Wesley Kreder (Europcar) and Julian Kern (Ag2r).

In the final, Europcar had taken control for Bryan Coquard but Laurent Pichon did a fabulous job to move forward on the ascending finishing straight. Bouhanni grabbed the wheel of his teammate and moved ahead of the Europcar sprinter. When he opened his sprint, the outcome was never in doubt and Bouhanni took  a hugely convincing win.

Bouhanni will now travel to China for the Tour of Beijing while he will leave it to fellow FDJ sprinter Arnaud Demare to defend the team's colours on home soil in Paris-Tours. Today's win gives him plenty of confidence for the sprints that are in store in the final WorldTour race of the season.

"There were three escapees that got a lot of time," he said. "My teammates did a great job during the final 130km. We did �€‹�€‹a great final race in the Coupe de France. Laurent Pichon really did a great job today. It was decisive and it gives me even more moral for the Tour of Beijing."

The race was the final in the season-long Coupe de France race series. While the FDJ team didn't manage to win the individual classification, the team took a comfortable win the teams classification. Anthony Geslin was the team's best rider in the individual rankings in 3rd.