photo credits @ Le Tour
An exhilarating day of racing towards Charantonnay saw Ivan Romeo (Movistar) make the most of his burgeoning talent to claim victory in today’s stage 3 of the Critérium du Dauphiné. The young Spaniard powered away from an impressive breakaway featuring the likes of Mathieu van der Poel and Florian Lipowitz and never looked back, claiming not only the stage but also the yellow and blue jersey.
A flurry of attacks led by Van der Poel
Van der Poel, Louis Barré and Van Gils initiated a series of attacks along the Côte de Cornille and the Côte de la Barbate, but their aggressions were quickly nullified, while the size of the peloton was cut in half, distancing not only the leader of the overall standings Jonathan Milan but also the wearer of the polka-dot jersey, Paul Ourselin, as well as strong climbers like Ben Healy, Guillaume Martin-Guyonnet and Magnus Sheffield.
13 riders in the lead
The intermediate sprint at La Chaise-Dieu provided an opportunity for Tadej Pogacar and Remco Evenepoel to chase a handful of bonus seconds, while Louis Barré launched a new move.
After several waves of counter-attackers later joined Barré, causing the lead group to swell to 13 riders, with Axel Laurance, Michael Shea Leonard (Ineos Grenadiers), Romeo, Brieuc Rolland (Groupama-FDJ), Florian Lipowitz (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), Julien Bernard (Lidl-Trek), Harold Tejada (XDS Astana), Van der Poel, Andreas Leknessund (Uno-X Mobility), Ed Dunbar (Jayco AlUla) and Anthony Turgis (Total Energies) amongst them.
GC teams react to the threat
Meanwhile, Pogacar’s UAE Team Emirates-XRG, Evenepoel’s Soudal Quick-Step and Jonas Vingegaard’s Visma-Lease a Bike work began together to control the day, keeping the gap to around two and a half minutes. But, the gap stretched out a further 50-seconds at the bottom of the last climb of the Côte du Château Jaune with 19 km to go.
Romeo sets off
Lipowitz put the hammer down at the bottom of the climb, cresting the summit alongside Tejada, Bernard and Leknessund, while Van der Poel and Barré join them with 13 km to go.
From there, Romeo, Laurance, Dunbar and Rolland bridged their way to the leaders with 11km to go. Meanwhile, the gap to the bunch was holding at 1’15’’.
Back up front, attacks started to fly, with Romeo eventually opening up a gap with 6 km to go, a move that proved insurmountable, as the neo-pro managed to cling to a 14-second advantage all the way to the finish.
You must be logged in to post a comment.
