Kump claims fourth stage win at Tour of Qinghai Lake

Slovenian Marko Kump continues to prove his WorldTour pedigree, while Adria Mobil teammate Radoslav Rogina closes gap on GC…

Dingxi, CHINA—It was another long day in the saddle as 178 of the original 214 riders rolled across the 203-kilometre ‘China Sports Lottery’ stage 9 road course featuring two categorised climbs in the 14th  Tour of Qinghai Lake (UCI 2.HC) on Monday, July 13.

With temperatures hovering at 30C, Slovenian Marko Kump (Adria Mobil) outlasted and outsprinted the peloton and stage 8 winner Mattia Gavazzi (Amore & Vita-Selle SMP) and Andriy Kulyk (Kolss-BDC) in a nail-biting bunch kick on the streets of Dingxi to claim is fourth stage victory of the race – Adria Mobil’s fifth, including Primož Roglič’s stage 5 win.

However, the Chief Commissaire John McDonnell (NZL) relegated Gavazzi due to a mid-race physical altercation between the two lead riders, which was initiated by Gavazzi after both he and Kump exchanged words following the second category 2 climb.

"Mattia is not a good sportsman,” Adria Mobil sports director Bostjan Mervar told Eurosport. “There were words exchanged on the road and Mattia hit Marko, but Marko stayed cool and dropped back to the chief commissaire to tell him what happened.

“The chief commissaire said he could send Mattia home, but I said to him it’s okay, we must cool down and let them finish the race.

Gavazzi’s relegation to the back of the peloton lifted Ukrainian Kulyk into second and Italian Marco Zanotti (Parkhotel-Valkenburg) into third.

The 26-year-old former Tinkoff-Saxo rider and current points leader said his success this week comes down to reading the course and having good form.

“The strategy is to stay in the slipstream as long as you can, save as much energy as much as you can and go the last 200 metres with 100 percent,” said Kump, who also won stages 1, 2 and 6. “All riders know what to do in the end as it depends on where the wind is coming from and which team is pulling. It also depends on the corners on the road, everything really – uphill and downhill.

“You just have to think all the time what’s best for you when you have to start with the sprint,” he continued. “Yeah, it looks like I’m doing pretty good.”

Kump crossed the line just ahead of Gavazzi, who claimed he suffered a mechanical while in the process of overtaking Kump at the line.

“I dropped my chain in the sprint in the finale when I was about to pass Marko,” said the 32-year-old Italian, who picked up two stages at last year’s race. “I would have won, but now next day.”

The 13-stage, 2,027-kilometre Asia Tour race continues with a 100km ‘Tian You De’ circuit race in Tianshui on Wednesday after a well-deserved rest day. Current race leader and best Asian rider Hossein Alizadeh (RTS-Santic) of Iran will be trying to defend what is now a 2 second lead over Croatian Radoslav Rogina (Adria Mobil), who gained bonus time by finishing behind Kulyk on the second intermediate sprint.

“Today was a hard day,” admitted Kump, who firmly believes the race will now come down to a battle for bonus seconds in the race’s final four stages. “Our strategy was not a stage win, but rather to gain seconds for Rogina.

“We were attacking from the beginning and when we came to the last part of the race and saw it was going to be a bunch sprint we started pulling,” he concluded. “We got one second, now it’s a two-second gap.

“We won today and are looking forward to a rest day, then we will fight all the way to the finish to take the yellow jersey.”

Aaron S. Lee | Follow on Twitter

Photos: Daebong Kim | 7Cycling