Frits Biesterbos won stage 2 of the Tour of Guangxi, from Chongzuo to Jingxi, on 14 October: in a slightly uphill sprint he beat Paul Magnier and Olav Kooij, the two everyone was waiting for. For the 24-year-old Dutchman from Picnic PostNL it is a first professional win and a first in the WorldTour. Magnier keeps the overall lead and now has Biesterbos right behind him.
Thirty kilometres of rising road
The stage starts at 126 metres in Chongzuo and stays below 300 metres of altitude until km 141.3, at the foot of the climb, along the national roads. The first intermediate sprint comes at km 94.3, in Nongming.
Then the road rises. The only categorised climb, a second-category ascent, is 8.3 km long at an average 3.9%, from 271 to 595 metres, and tops out 29.9 km from the finish. After the summit there is no real descent: the road keeps climbing gently up to 738 metres in Jingxi, with the second intermediate sprint 12.3 km from the line. A sprinters’ stage, but with the last half hour always slightly uphill.
Sixty kilometres to form a break
The start is nervous: for about 60 km attack follows attack and the bunch brings them all back, including several from Robbe Dhondt for Picnic PostNL. In the end four riders go: Jonas Rickaert of Alpecin-Premier Tech, Dries De Bondt of Jayco AlUla, Martin Tjøtta of Uno-X Mobility and China’s Liu Chenglu. Their lead peaks at two minutes: the bunch, led by Soudal Quick-Step and Decathlon, never lets them go far.
Rickaert is caught 56 km from the finish. On the climb Liu is dropped and De Bondt is left alone: he is caught near the summit, about 30 km from the line.
The climb does not drop the sprinters
On the categorised climb Jhonatan Narváez and Javier Romo try their luck and are brought back soon after. Afonso Eulálio of Bahrain Victorious also attacks from the bunch: he is first over the top and takes the mountains jersey. Behind, a few sprinters suffer, Fabio Jakobsen and Arvid De Kleijn among them, but the gradient is too gentle for a real selection and they get back on.
In the last ten kilometres Kévin Vauquelin tries, 8.6 km from the finish, then Baptiste Veistroffer, Juan Ayuso, Tom Pidcock and Max Van Gils. Nobody opens a real gap: with 6 km to go Soudal Quick-Step has closed everything down and the sprint is on.
Three hundred metres into the wind
The road is wide and the lead-out trains never fully form. Groupama-FDJ brings Matteo Milan forward, Daan Hoole guides Kooij through the last two kilometres, and Laurenz Rex is pulling at 900 metres. Magnier loses his last man and has to do it himself.
The Frenchman goes early, about 300 metres from the line, into a headwind. It is the moment Picnic PostNL had prepared for: the team had delivered Biesterbos right onto the race leader’s wheel. The Dutchman waits, comes out of the slipstream at the right moment and passes him.
Kooij comes flying from behind: with a couple more metres he would have won. Max Kanter, in Kooij’s slipstream, is fourth. Behind them the bunch arrives together: a true bunch sprint.
Biesterbos’s first win
A sprinter nobody had down as one
Biesterbos is not seen as a top sprinter: in 2025 he was Dutch gravel champion, and this is his first season at Picnic PostNL. He had never won a WorldTour race. After the stage he said he was delighted with his first victory, made even better by coming at WorldTour level, and that the team’s lead-out had worked as well as the day before.
For Picnic PostNL it is the third win of the season, after Pavel Bittner in a French one-day race and Casper van Uden on a stage of the Tour of Türkiye, and the first in the WorldTour, in the last week of a difficult year. The morning plan was a different one: bonus seconds for Dhondt in the overall standings.
Magnier keeps the lead
Magnier came in with six wins from the last seven stages raced in Guangxi, including the one in Chongzuo the day before. He stays top of the general classification, the points and the young riders’ standings; the mountains jersey goes to Eulálio.
The fagIAno, with its probabilities frozen the evening before, gave the bunch sprint 91.0%: it got that right. Not the winner. At the top of our list were Kooij at 30.0% and Magnier at 26.3%; Biesterbos was fifteenth, at 0.7%.
The Italians
The best Italian is Matteo Moschetti of Pinarello-Q36.5, seventh in the sprint; he is also the best Italian overall, 15th, 16 seconds behind Magnier. Matteo Milan, led out by Groupama-FDJ, finishes fifteenth, Manlio Moro twentieth. All the other Italians, from Mattia Agostinacchio to Davide Formolo, come in with the bunch: all 148 starters finished the stage.
The stage top ten
| # | Rider | Team | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Frits Biesterbos | Team Picnic Postnl | 3h45’19” |
| 2 | Paul Magnier | Soudal Quick-Step | s.t. |
| 3 | Olav Kooij | Decathlon CMA CGM Team | s.t. |
| 4 | Max Kanter | XDS Astana Team | s.t. |
| 5 | Robin Froidevaux | Tudor Pro Cycling Team | s.t. |
| 6 | Jordi Meeus | Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe | s.t. |
| 7 | Matteo Moschetti | Pinarello-Q36.5 Pro Cycling Team | s.t. |
| 8 | Erlend Blikra | Uno-X Mobility | s.t. |
| 9 | Lionel Taminiaux | Lotto Intermarché | s.t. |
| 10 | Oded Kogut | NSN Cycling Team | s.t. |
General classification after stage 2
| # | Rider | Team | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Paul Magnier | Soudal Quick-Step | 6h45’26” |
| 2 | Frits Biesterbos | Team Picnic Postnl | +6″ |
| 3 | Sam Welsford | Netcompany Ineos | +10″ |
| 4 | Fredrik Dversnes | Uno-X Mobility | +10″ |
| 5 | Max Kanter | XDS Astana Team | +12″ |
| 6 | Olav Kooij | Decathlon CMA CGM Team | +12″ |
| 7 | Neilson Powless | EF Education-Easypost | +12″ |
| 8 | Jhonatan Narvaez | UAE Team Emirates XRG | +13″ |
| 9 | Martin Tjøtta | Uno-X Mobility | +13″ |
| 10 | Pau Miquel Delgado | Bahrain Victorious | +14″ |
The race in numbers
- Average speed
- 47.8 km/h 179.5 km in 3h45’19”, the winner’s time.
- Weather at the finish
- 27–28 °C 0.3 mm of rain; in Jingxi, from 14 to 17 local time.
- Wind at the finish
- 11–14 km/h From the south, gusts up to 30 km/h; over the same hours.
- Selection index
- 0 out of 100 Of 148 finishers: 122 within 30 seconds of the winner, 127 within 2 minutes, 135 within 10 minutes (him included). It runs from 0, a bunch sprint, to 98, a solo finish.
News written with the help of Mnemosyne.
Sources
- Results and times: UCI, official results.
- Team Picnic PostNL, «Strong lead-out and sprint as Team Picnic PostNL win with Frits Biesterbos in Tour of Guangxi».
- Tour, «Biesterbos beats Magnier on the second stage of the Guangxi race».
- NOS, «Biesterbos sprint Magnier en Kooij eruit, eerste grote zege van seizoen Picnic-PostNL».
- ProCyclingUK, «Frits Biesterbos wins 2026 Tour of Guangxi Stage 2».
- Weather: Open-Meteo (CC BY 4.0).