Ladagnous wins in Gabon

Frenchman Ladagnous led the race from start to finish after finishing first in the opening stage on Tuesday, but his final overall margin of victory was just four seconds over Portuguese rider Filipe Cardoso, of the Liberty Seguros team.

Ladagnous's compatriot Pierre Rolland of the Bbox Bouygues Telecom team was third, 23 seconds behind the winner.

On Sunday's 134km final stage, Hutarovich finished ahead of Manuel Cardoso (Portugal, Liberty Seguros) and Edward Deans (South Africa, House of Paint).

Manuel Cardoso of Liberty Seguros won the fifth stage of the Tropicale Amissa Bongo in Gabon.

The Portuguese rider prevailed in the 109.9km stage between Bibasse and Oyem as Frenchman Matthieu Ladagnous preserved the yellow jersey.

Cardoso edged Yauheni Hutarovitch of the Belarus to the line with team-mate Filipe Cardoso, second overall, taking third place and halving Francaise des Jeux ace Ladagnous's lead to four seconds going into Sunday's final stage into Libreville.

Johan Tschopp edged a sprint finish to take stage four of the Tropicale Amissa Bongo in Gabon.

The Bouygues Telecom rider came second in Wednesday's second stage.

But he managed to get away from Estonian Mart Ojavee (CC Bourgas) after the pair stayed together for much of the stage.

Frenchman Matthieu Ladagnous of Francaise des Jeux retained the yellow jersey after coming fifth in BItam.

James Ball landed a surprise by winning stage three of the Tropicale Amissa Bongo in Gabon.

South African Ball, riding for his country's House of Paint team, beat overall race leader Matthieu Ladagnous (Francaise des Jeux) into second in Franceville.

Ladagnous, however, retained the yellow jersey.

Russian Evgeny Sokolov won the second stage of the fourth Tropicale Amissa Bongo in Gabon.

The Bouygues Telecom rider won the 120.2 kilometre stage between Mounana and Franceville.

Swiss rider Johan Tschopp, also of Bouygues, finished close behind in second.

Mathieu Ladagnous (Francaise des Jeux) came fourth and retained the overall leader's jersey.

Matthieu Ladagnous of Francaise des Jeux won the opening stage of the Tropicale Amissa Bongo in Gabon.

The 24-year-old beat team-mate Jerome Coppel and fellow escapees Pierre Rolland of Bouygues Telecom plus the Liberty Seguros duo of Filipe Cardoso and Isidro Nozal to the line following an 88km stage from Franceville to Akieni.

Those five escaped from a 15-man lead group after 40km of the race with the peloton finishing more than 10 minutes back.

The fourth edition of the six-stage race features 90 riders from 15 teams including four pro European teams - Team Bourgas of Bulgaria being the other - and is the first 2.1 UCI classfied race of the season.