Tour of California stage 3: Skujins wins in San Jose

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Toms Skujins took the biggest win of his career in San Jose, pulling off an audacious 55km solo ride to the finish line that also saw him move into the leader’s jersey on stage 3 of the Tour of California. The 23-year-old started to hit the wall in the final kilometre of the climb as Team Sky led the chase behind realising that the GC could be riding away from them, but held firm to take the lead from Peter Sagan (Tinkoff-Saxo) by 32 seconds.

Sagan led home the chasers for his third second place in three days ahead of Julian Alaphilippe (Etixx-Quick-Step). Mark Cavendish saw his overall lead disappear as he finished in the gruppeto, several minutes down on Skujins.

"The last split I heard was like two minutes," Skujins said after the finish. "And then I thought this last 2km is going to be insufferable. I didn’t look back at all like the whole race, except for that last kilometre because I was like, ‘No way they are going to catch me.’ It was such a relief to get those last 200 metres, because that’s when I really knew that I going to get it."

Skujins was part of a seven-man escape that launched off the back of an attack by Roy Curvers (Giant-Alpecin) and Travis Meyer (Drapac). Joining the pair were Skujins Daniel Oss (BMC), Jonny Clarke (UnitedHealthcare), Oscar Clark (Hincapie), and Evan Huffman (Team SmartStop).

They built up a lead of nearly five minutes, as Oss went after the mountains classification, but then underestimated the wily Latvian on the climb to Mt. Hamilton, where Skujins stuck in the knife.

Oss chased with Clarke and Huffman all the way to the top, but on the deceptively technical descent, Huffman first lost contact and then Skujins and Clarke each came to grief several times on the descent, but without incident.

Still, Skujins held a lead of two minutes on his chasers, with the peloton four minutes behind as he headed up the penultimate climb and rode himself into the mountains classification.

The Tinkoff-Saxo team chased the seven-man escape from where it left the peloton 36km into the stage until the race hit Mt. Hamilton, the massive hors categorie ascent crested just under 50km to the finish. Sagan chased back through the team cars on the climb, rejoining the peloton after the descent but absent one important item: race leader Mark Cavendish, who threw in the towel on the mountainous stage.

It looked as if Sagan might win the stage, as the finish suited him, but there were two things standing in his way: first, the very determined and underestimated Skujins, who threw caution to the wind even after his two near crashes, hurtling down each descent and then holding his own going uphill, and second, the lack of teammates.

Team Sky looked to keep the general classification in control, but weren't going to chase Skujins down just to hand the yellow jersey over to Sagan. British champion Peter Kennaugh looked increasingly frustrated by the situation as the final 10km clicked down, until finally Phil Deignan took charge and whittled the leader's gap down.

They timed it just well enough to deny Sagan the stage win, but keep Kennaugh and Henao in contention at 47 seconds, time easy enough to get back on Sagan when the race heads up Mt. Baldy, but with plenty of other contenders in tow. Etixx-Quickstep salvaged the day with a fine third place from Julian Alaphilippe, with Cavendish in the points classification lead and Alaphilippe in the white jersey of best young rider.

"Today I thought might be a chance to maybe show myself if the condition was there. Voila, my condition was good," Alaphilippe said. "I was able to stay in the front group with the best guys. In the end it was clear we couldn't catch Skujins, so congratulations to him for a strong stage. I still wanted to go for the podium on the uphill finish and I did it. Against a guy like Peter Sagan I can be satisfied with a third place. Now I am in the White Jersey for Best Young Rider, and fourth in the GC. Tomorrow begins more chances for sprints with Mark. We'll see what we can do. I'm learning more and more day-by-day, and if there can be an opportunity for me in the next days, why not, we will see what I can do to protect my overall position."

In addition to the race lead, Skujins holds the mountains classification.

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