On a day all the GC favorites watched each other, waiting for a move that never came, four men decided to play their own game of chance up the 3792-meter-high, hors catégorie Daban mountain.

The way things have turned out the past few days during the Tour of Qinghai Lake, they didn't really stand much hope. But in cycling, hope, however small it may be, is enough to drive someone to success — and on Friday in Menyuan, success became a reality for 24-year-old Martin Mares.

"Every time I hoped," said the Czech rider from PSK Whirlpool, who was in fact the overall winner from 2005. "It was a difficult stage for me because I was out in front for a long time with 15 other riders, and it was a hard, hard mountain. It was so cold and rainy, but I went full gas."

Halfway up the climb, Mares, along with John Devine (Discovery Channel), Bartosz Huzarski (Intel-Action) and Oscar Garcia Pinto (Relax-Gam), decided to take make what turned out to be the day's winning move. Their slender two-minute lead over the top was dicey at best. Yet they persisted, resisted, and finally broke through, with Mares attacking on a small rise just before the finish to complete a dream come true.

"I thought with 15 kilometers to go when we had one and a half minutes, maybe - but I still didn't think I'd win because I can't sprint ... now ... I can't believe I've won the stage!" Mares said, stunned, delighted and wide-eyed moments after crossing the line.

Congrats to race leader Gabriele Massaglia

Photo: Anthony Tan

With Relax's Nacor Burgos Rojo leading a 28-man group home, 1:18 behind Mares and including the nine we've been talking about since Stage 4, the leader board remains unchanged. Though race leader Gabriele Massaglia said the day was far from easy, calling it “super difficult."

"With so many breakaways, my team had to work really hard, and they did a great, great job,” said the 36-year-old veteran. “On the climb, it was very cold and my legs were almost numb because of it, but thankfully, my teammate Sergio Barbero was always with me.

"Tomorrow is the really last day; I think it will be super-hard. Mancebo and Relax will definitely be ones to watch, also the Englishman from DFL [Daniel Lloyd] - he's really strong, but us, we're also very strong."

However, should something similar happen tomorrow, the sixth Tour of Qinghai Lake will, quite incredibly after so many high mountains, be decided in a sprint, and only after Sunday's criterium in Xining.

Early flight
The sun finally came out for Friday's start, and given what lay ahead, plenty of riders were keen to get away. A group of 13 took off right from the get-go and gained a minute after 7km. Then, just as they were brought back, a bigger bunch of 16 took off, enjoying a handy three-minute lead after 36km.

Double that distance later, only PSK Whirlpool's Vojtech Dlouhy had been dropped by the fast-moving break, their advantage now at the eight-minute mark. However, 10km on, as the road steepened significantly, Colombian Juan Pablo Wilches (DFL Cyclingnews) and Luxembourger Jempy Drucker (Fidea) were all that remained front the early break, with a group of four in hot pursuit.

A little more than halfway up the climb, this quartet - composed of Mares, Devine, Huzarski and Pinto - made the junction before going straight through the lead pair. Over the top, the four were 1:05 ahead of Pablo Wilches and Drucker and 2:10 ahead of the yellow jersey group, with 42 clicks left to race.

And that's pretty much the way things stayed till the finish, Mares choosing not to wait for a sprint but instead attacking on a small rise before the line, and holding off Devine to claim a well-deserved victory.

Bean team report

Catching up with Jittery Joe’s climber Andy Bajadali before the start in Xining, VeloNews discovered the 34-year-old Coloradan — the bean team’s man for the general classification, hoping for a top-five finish — was one of the unlucky crash victims from the fourth stage, which also saw then-race leader Allan Davis crash out of contention.

Recalled Bajadali: "I’m feeling okay, but I'm not particularly good in cold, wet conditions like that and I got really cold. I was hanging all right; I think I went a little too deep to make that first group, so I went back to the second group and I had a hard time recovering. But I gathered myself over the top and was descending well, and Danny [Van Hout, team manager] said I was only 45 seconds or so behind a group of 16 coming back on.

"I was taking some chances on the descent, going for it, trying to get back onto the lead group, and I took myself out on one of the turns really bad ... I sat on the road for five minutes, just trying to get my wits back. But that was it: I broke my hip on the same side a few years ago and it really worried me, and I was feeling that same kind of pain, so I pretty much stopped racing from then on out - I knew the race for GC was pretty much over at that point.”

Bajadali's the best-placed rider from the team on the overall, but he admitted it would take a minor miracle to gain back the 22:30 he's lost in the last week: "We're going for stage wins right now, so that's the main priority," he conceded.

"I got some got massage and I feel totally recovered, so I'm really motivated the next few days to try something. I really want to see where my level's at. I haven't really attacked that much in the race, so we'll see how I'm feeling. But we'll see what the GC guys want to do - it's really tight in the top 10 - so I guess we'll see if they let someone like me go up the road ... I'm 23 minutes back, I'm not going to make that up, but I'd like to go for a KOM or a stage.”

The road ahead
Saturday's stage provides the last chance to cause any change of significance to the overall classification. At 168 kilometers long, the race won't begin for real until just after the 100km mark, when the hors catégorie, 3448-meter-high ascent up Daban mountain begins. It's the same mountain as the day before, but this alternative route is a little more severe. Just how well the riders have recovered will largely determine the final outcome.