Tour of Alberta: Dennis jumps to overall lead with stage win

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Rohan Dennis (Garmin-Sharp) won stage 3 at the Tour of Alberta Friday and took the yellow jersey from Cannondale's Peter Sagan. Dennis won a six-up sprint in front of BMC's Brent Bookwalter out of a break group that peeled away from an original group of 18 with about 25km remaining.

Cannondale's Damiano Caruso finished third, followed by Patrick Gretsch (Argos-Shimano), Robert Gesink (Belkin) and Steve Morabito (BMC). Sagan finished in the field more than 15 minutes back but held onto the green sprinter's jersey.

"The last 4km was pretty aggressive," Dennis said. "So I was lucky I still had some sort of legs to follow Brent – or all of then really – attacking. And I sort of saved some as well for that final sprint."

Dennis also took the jersey for best young rider from Sagan, while Gesink earned the polka dot mountain jersey. Morabito, who led the six-rider group into the finish to set up Bookwalter for the finale, got the jersey for most aggressive rider. Optum-Kelly Benefits rider Ryan Anderson took the best Canadian jersey from Ryder Hesjedal after finishing well ahead of the field in the remnants of the original break.

Bookwalter now trails Dennis by 18 seconds in the overall, with Caruso at 30 seconds, Gretsch at 31 seconds and Gesink at 34 seconds. The BMC rider said he knew he would have a difficult time getting past Dennis in the finale, despite the help from Morabito.

"I was confident of my sprint, but I knew it was going to be tough," Bookwalter said. "Dennis had gapped me in the bonus sprints the past two days. So I knew he was really quick and the guy to beat. I maybe tried to come around him a little too early."

Although the yellow jersey in the UCI 2.1 race is nice. Dennis was more excited about the prize he got on the podium – the Drumheller area is very proud of its wealth of dinosaur bones, and Dennis' wish to get one came true.

"I didn't expect it, but it's probably the best prize I've ever gotten for a race," he said. "I think I've sort of topped my career. It's a bit of shame that it's at the start of my career and not the end; everything is going to be a bit less from here on."

How it happened:

The 170km Stage 3 from Strathmore to Drumheller started just to the east of Calgary in Strathmore. The plains around Strathmore quickly gave way to rolling hills as the race headed east then north through the community of Rosebud and into the heart of the Canadian Badlands.

The short, steep grades along the Red Deer River provided some climbing challenges on the way to the finish in Drumheller, but not before the race passed through town onto a large loop north and back into town with a twisting descent through a painted Canton to the finish. The stage offered one intermediate sprint 93.4km into the race and two KOMs at 98.2km and 130.9km. For the third straight day the topography of the route and a motivated peloton pushed the pace to 46km/h over the first hour of racing.

Sixty-three kilometers into the 170km stage, 5-hour Energy/Kenda's Francisco Mancebo initiated a breakaway that included multiple dangerous general classification riders. That 12-rider group was joined by six more riders to form a breakaway of 18. Included in the group were Dennis at 26 seconds; Bookwalter at 37 seconds; Gretsch at 44 seconds; Gesink at 47 seconds; Caruso at 49 seconds; Bobby Sweeting (5-hour Energy/Kenda) at 58 seconds; and Mancebo at 59 seconds.

"There were a couple of attacks by Mancebo over a couple of those little rollers about 60km in," Dennis said. "A couple of us jumped across, and from then it was a lot of little attacks and the group was just sort of formed. I saw a group of five or six behind, and I was worried that Peter Sagan was in there. I thought as soon as he's here the break will shut down. So I was hoping they wouldn't catch us, but when they did I saw that Peter wasn't there and it was a bit of a relief. From then on it all panned out."

The remaining breakaway riders, who were more than a minute down on GC, included Anderson, Morabito, Matthias Friedman (Champion System), Jakub Novak (BMC), Marcus Burghardt (BMC), Jeremy Vennell (Bissell Pro Cycling), Aidis Kruopis (Orica-GreenEdge), Steven Kruijswik (Belkin), Alexander Cataford (Equipe Garneau-Quebecor), Chris Jones (UnitedHealthcare) and 5-hour's James Stemper.

The size of the group and its accumulated horsepower quickly powered the escapees to a five-minute gap with 90km remaining. Dennis attacked the group and got a gap with Sagan's teammate, Caruso. But the move was short-lived as the pair was easily brought back into the group. Ten kilometers later as the break entered Drumheller for the first pass through, the gap ballooned to 6:30.

Back in the field, Cannondale had already thrown in the towel and pulled its riders off the front after getting no help with the chase. The gap then grew to eight minutes with just over 25km remaining.

Belkin's Gesink attacked the breakaway and brought Dennis, Gretsch, Caruso, Morabito and Bookwalter along with him, while the rest of the break chased hard to catch the leaders. With 24km to go, the leaders has 20 seconds on the first chase group and well over 10 minutes on the peloton. The leaders held that advantage as they rode into Drumheller for the finish.

Now Dennis will have to defend yellow from a handful of riders within a minute on the general classification.

"Brent is really still quite close, and Patrick Gretsch is within striking range, so it's not all stitched up," Dennis said. "But I believe my team is strong enough to help me control it and really finish this race off."

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