The long awaited queen stage of the tenth Tour of Hainan lived up to expectations with race favorite Andrey Zeits of Astana going clear to claim the first victory of his eight-year long professional career while Lampre-Merida’s Sacha Modolo paced himself to survive unscathed from the hills leading to Wuzhishan.

“I want to thank the organizers for putting together this nice race at the end of the season”, Zeits declared at the post-race press conference. “It’s my fourth time doing the Tour of Hainan and I like it, especially when the stages are long like sometimes this year. I’m happy to finally win a race. It’s been a great team work by Astana. I was pedaling on an easy mode all day while my team-mates were pulling the bunch. They prepared for my attack very well. I also tried to reach the finish line with a big enough gap to take the yellow jersey. It didn’t happen but I’m equally happy with the blue jersey [best Asian rider].”

As lone escapee Oleksandr Polivoda from the Ukraine national team surrendered, Zeits rode away with 16km to go as he countered an acceleration by his young team mate Bakhtiar Kozhatayev. Another promising rider Valerio Conti followed the instructions from his Lampre-Merida team to not move away from Zeits’ wheel in the decisive hill. But the young Italian got dropped in the downhill. He also caused a split that prevented chaser Julien El Farès of Marseille 13-KTM from coming across to the Kazakh leader.

Zeits is now second overall with just one flat stage left.