Körber declared victor in photo finish finale

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Even Sebastian Körber (Nutrixxion Abus) congratulated Landbouwkrediet's Joeri Stallaert for winning stage 6 at the Taihu Lake Resort, but the photo-finish declared the German a winner over the young Belgian who finished as runner-up for the second day in a row. RusVelo's Leonid Krasnov rounded out the top-three in a field sprint finale contested into a strong headwind.

"Inside the last kilometer, I was sitting on [Alexander] Serebryakov's wheel," Stallaert said. "But there was almost a crash, so I jumped on [points classification leader Alois] Kankovsky's wheel. I opened my sprint with 200 metres to go. I was faster than everyone else. I really thought that I had won but I got blocked by the headwind. Timing wasn't right. It gives me big regrets. Hopefully I'll win tomorrow."

It was a bit of a surprise for Körber to become the stage winner. "When I took the last curve, I didn't know the win was around the corner," the rider from Nürnberg said. "I've been used to making the top five at races in Asia with four times fourth in China recently but winning is a big result. It's my first big achievement, really. This race is perfect for me. It's flat. The Taihu lake is beautiful. I love this race."

Milan Kadlec (Dukla Praha) remains in the general classification lead, maintaining his nine-second advantage over Floris Goesinnen (Drapac Cycling) with two stages remaining. The Czech rider is taking it day-by-day and hopes to retain the leader's jersey through the final stage.

"It all remains open," Kadlec told Cyclingnews. "It was pretty nervous again today. It's difficult to read the race with some teams, especially the Asians, riding for the teams' classifications. We've pulled but not that much today. For the first 70 kilometres, attacks and counter-attacks were coming from everywhere."

"It made an average speed of 49km/h," said Stallaert.

Five riders eventually managed to go clear: Peter Thompson (Drapac), Vitaly Popkov (ISD), Benjamin Giraud (La Pomme-Marseille), Alejandio Marque (Carmim-Prio) and Li Fuyu (Hengxiang) and they managed a maximum lead of 1:07. Giraud and Marque dropped their fellow escapees and continued in the lead until they got caught with 2km to go as Team Type 1-Sanofi chased them down, hoping for another Alexander Serebryakov stage victory.