Jay Vine (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) launched a perfectly-timed attack in the final kilometre to win stage 3 of the Tour de Romandie, claiming his third win of the season and first WorldTour victory for more than two years.
Movistar had led things out on the uphill finale in Cossonay, with Iván Romeo doing the work for Javier Romo. However, when the Spanish pair stalled and Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) didn’t kick on after looking like he might, Vine accelerated violently and found separation.
There was a grimace on the Australian’s face, but he held strong all the way to the line to win solo, with a narrow gap of just two seconds at the line from Lenny Martinez (Bahrain Victorious), who won the sprint for second. Vine’s teammate João Almeida finished third.
Pre-stage race leader Alex Baudin (EF Education-EasyPost) finished in the main group up the gruelling finish to maintain his lead heading into the final two stages.
“The first two hours were really, really hard. It felt like I was being motor paced, but after that [second] climb, the gap was being reduced to Stefan [Küng] and I thought ‘OK, I’ve got to be up here in this group to minimise time gaps, so I might as well see what I can do and have a crack,” said Vine, describing his third stage.
“There was a pause in the group, and I mean I’m not very bright, so I was like ‘Is it 1km to the top of the climb, or 1km to the finish’, but that was probably my bullet and my moment to go, and I took it. Once I rounded the corner, I knew it started to flatten off and go downhill again, so I was pretty safe by them.”
Vine moved up to sixth on GC thanks to his stage win, with him and Almeida set to be main players for the overall in the final two weekend stages. With the Giro starting a week today, the Australian looks to be coming into peak form just more than a year after his horror crash in Itzulia Basque Country.
“It’s pretty incredible, it’s been a long road back to recovery from my neck last year and hopefully I’ll be starting my second Giro in a couple of days’ time. Three wins so far this year and my first WorldTour win in a long time, so I’m really happy and I know my son and wife are watching at home,” said Vine.
“It’s all to play for tomorrow and on the time trial.”
How it unfolded
The Tour de Romandie continued on stage 3 with another undulating route, starting and finishing in Cossonay, with 183.1km of racing in front of the 119 remaining riders.
With more tough terrain on offer from the flag drop four strong riders initially gained an advantage and tried to form the break, Stefan Küng (Groupama-FDJ), Huub Artz (Intermarché-Wanty), Bauke Mollema (Lidl-Trek) and Tobias Bayer (Alpecin-Deceuninck).
Bayer struggled and got dropped under 10km into the day, only to be joined by the current King of the Mountains leader Ben Zwiehoff (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe). They tried to stay ahead but gave up the ghost and were reabsorbed by the peloton 160km from the finish.
With the break of three formed for the day, the peloton settled back into a controlling rhythm and allowed the trio to build a lead of almost six minutes.
The look of stage 3 remained the same for much of the middle of the race, although the lead was reduced to 2:50 with 55km remaining.
Perhaps with that in mind, on the longest categorised climb of the day, the Col du Mollendruz, Küng set off on his own, leading his two fellow escapees to chase. Artz bridged across soon after, with the Dutch veteran Mollema being distanced.
There was a big mix of teams on the front of the peloton on the climb, notably Bahrain-Victorious, Picnic-PostNL and the team of race leader Baudin, EF Education-EasyPost. But not Evenepoel’s Soudal-QuickStep squad – they paced for much of Thursday’s stage 2, but had rethought their tactics for the third road stage.
Küng finally found separation 6km after his initial move to distance his breakaway companions, meaning he was solo with 46km in the way of a stage victory. The Swiss rider’s lead was maintained at more than two minutes by the time he crested the long climb.
The chase was picked up frantically behind, with Visma-Lease a Bike also committing a rider alongside Movistar and several other teams. Küng’s lead was cut down significantly to only 30 seconds with 20km remaining, with the stage looking set to come down to an uphill sprint.
Küng was finally caught 11.2km from the line, and suddenly all eyes turned to the rapid approach into the uphill finale in Cossonay.
Once the final run downhill was completed, Evenepoel was led to the foot of the uphill finale by Pascal Eenkhoorn with just under 2km to go, before Movistar countered through Romeo and Romo pushing the pace. The Spanish riders failed to find a gap with any attack, however, and they were quickly left behind by Vine.
The Australian attacked for the second day running in Romandie and quickly got a good gap. He rode solo to the victory, with a frustrated Martinez sprinting behind for second after his Bahrain team had done a lot of the work throughout the stage.
On a great day for UAE, Vine and Almeida, who sprinted to third, jumped ahead of Evenepoel ahead of tomorrow’s queen stage to Thyon 2000 and the final time trial on Sunday, where the GC fight will come to an end.
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