It's a more than good start list that will characterize the sixth edition of the Tour of Guangxi, a race that, as has been customary in recent years, will conclude the World Tour season and which, compared to 2025, will see eight riders and one more team from the top series taking the start.

From Fangchenggang, unlike last year, 137 riders will set off representing 21 teams divided into 17 World Tour (notably the return of Groupama-FDJ after seven years from their first and only participation), a national selection (the Chinese one) and two ProTeams, namely Israel-Premier Tech and Lotto.

The latter, absolute protagonist 365 days ago with two stage wins and the overall classification triumph of Lennert Van Eetvelt, will not be able to count on the qualities of the reigning champion (who ended his troubled season early) and therefore will necessarily have to change their focus, perhaps aiming for partial successes with the spark of Steffen De Schuyteneer who appeared in excellent form at the Tour of Taihu Lake.

Competing with him for this type of sprint goal, the Belgian will however find a fierce and competitive group of rivals led by an unstoppable Paul Magnier who, after putting together 9 victories in the last month of racing, will undoubtedly try to further expand his personal tally. Along with the French Soudal Quick-Step rider, the recent winner of the Binche-Chimay-Binche/Memorial Frank Vandenbroucke Jordi Meeus (Red Bull BORA hansgrohe), the pair of Germans Max Kanter (XDS Astana) and Phil Bauhaus (Bahrain-Victorious), Pavel Bittner and, alternatively for Team Picnic PostNL, Casper van Uden, Arne Marit (Intermarchè-Wanty), the second-place finisher at the Tour of Taihu Lake Stanisław Aniołkowski (Cofidis), Paul Penhoet (Groupama - FDJ), the stage winner in Zagreb at the CRO Race Oded Kogut (Israel Premier-Tech) and our Simone Consonni (Lidl-Trek) will launch into the sprints.

The thirty-one-year-old from Bergamo will be part of what is perhaps, along with UAE Team Emirates-XRG, the best-equipped team to take home the red jersey of the general classification. For this objective, the American team has brought none other than the winner of the latest Amstel Gold Race Mattias Skjelmose, a rider who could excel on the Nongla slopes and absolutely make the difference. In this mission, the Dane can count on the support of Juan Pedro Lopez and Tao Geoghegan Hart, who can prevent their leader from being caught in the middle by teams that, for the occasion, will line up multiple leaders like the already mentioned UAE (starting with Jhonathan Narvaez and Jan Christen), XDS Astana (driven by the South American duo Harold Martin Lopez-Sergio Higuita) and Team Visma Lease a Bike with Jørgen Nordhagen and Cian Uijtdebroeks.

They will all try to play their cards to snatch the first place in the standings, a goal for which one cannot exclude the two-time XCO World Champion Alan Hatherly who absolutely has the potential for an effort like that required on the Nongla slopes, Ewen Costiou (Arkéa - B&B Hotels), Fran van den Broek (Team Picnic PostNL), the winner of Okolo Slovenska Paul Double (Jayco AlUla), Pello Bilbao (Bahrain-Victorious), the 2023 runner-up Remy Rochas (Groupama-FDJ) and Aurelien Paret-Peintre (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale Team).

On the Italian side, the hopes of seeing an Italian on the top step of the podium (where only Gianni Moscon has stood so far in 2018) are decidedly slim, while the possibilities of celebrating a stage win - which has been missing from Guangxi since 2023 when Viviani and Milan each won a stage - are much more concrete. To break this drought, in addition to the already mentioned Consonni, Francesco Busatto (Intermarchè-Wanty) and Luca Mozzato (Arkéa - B&B Hotels) certainly have good cards to play, while it is more likely that Andrea Raccagni Noviero (Soudal Quick-Step), Daniel Skerl and Andrea Pasqualon (Bahrain - Victorious), Florian Samuel Kajamini and Fusto Masnada (XDS Astana Team), Davide Cimolai (Movistar) and Kevin Colleoni (Intermarchè-Wanty) are more focused on supporting their leaders and, except perhaps for some breakaways, must fulfill domestique duties.