USA's Andrew 'AJ' August clinched his first professional victory, after the 20-year-old Ineos Grenadiers rider ambushed the other three riders in a late breakaway to triumph on stage 3 of the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana.
A four-rider attack by August, Uno-X Mobility racer Ådne Holter, Soudal-QuickStep's Jonathan Vervenne and Florian Vermeersch (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) shot away from the strung-out peloton during the long, sweeping descent off the main challenge of the day, the category 2 Puerto del Tibi.
Despite the best efforts of NSN, working for race leader Biniam Girmay, and Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe to neutralise the attack, the quartet stayed away by the bare minimum all the way to the finish town of San Vicente del Raspeig.
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While August, having failed to put in a single turn, neatly dispatched the rest of the break to claim his debut win, Holter was second, Vermeersch third, leaving Vervenne off the podium. Girmay led in the peloton for fifth, four seconds back, and retained the overall lead.
"I didn't expect a win at all today because 50kms to go, my team says to me, 'AJ, time to go to the front and pull back the breakaway'," August recounted later.
"So I stayed in the peloton then tried, and reached the [late] attack. I had no reason to ride because we had Ben [Turner] behind for the sprint so I used that to my advantage and made the win happen.
"It wasn't how I imagined my first professional win but I'd saved a lot of energy by not working full gas, but it was not my role to contribute. So I took advantage of being fresh, sprinted from the back and crossed the line first."
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Andrew August (Ineos Grenadiers) bolts from four-rider group to win stage 3 (Image credit: Getty Images)
How it unfolded
On a day dominated by the one classified ascent of cat. 2 Puerto del Tibi, eight riders made it away over the course of 50 kilometres: García Pierna and Diego Diego Uriarte (Kern Pharma) going first and were eventually joined by Dutch breakaway fanatic Danny van der Tuuk (Euskatel-Euskadi), Bais and Polti-VisitMalta teammate Pablo Garcia, Kmínek Vojtěch (Burgos Burpellet BH), Matteo Fabbro (Solution Tech NIPPO Rali) and José Antonio Prieto (Petrolike).
The break made it as far as the region's southern capital, Alicante, as the rain began, but once it turned inland towards the long, grinding ascent up from the coastline to the Puerto del Tibi, events began to turn against them.
Vojtěch, Prieto and Uriarte were the first to crack, and as the seven-kilometre ascent dragged on, more gaps emerged in the eight ahead, and over the top only García Pierna and Bais were able to stay in front, but their attempts to keep clear proved futile.
In a front peloton squeezed down to 50 riders or less - but still, crucially, including the race leader Girmay - once the break was reabsorbed, there was some brief skirmishing by the race's GC contenders. But it was more a prologue to Saturday's crunch stage than a serious attempt to shift the overall.
Some 27 kilomeres from the finale, an attack by Gianpaolo Caruso (Bahrain Victorious) and then Brandon McNulty (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) was responded to by Remco Evenepoel (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), with McNulty's teammate João Almeida also having a dig too.
The fast downhill terrain ensured the flurry of attacks did not let up and finally a move by Vermeersch brought a fast response from August (Ineos Grenadiers) and, slightly more slowly, the Uno-X Mobility racer Ådne Holter and Soudal-QuickStep's Jonathan Vervenne.
The breakaway stayed away to decide the final podium (L-R): Florian Vermeersch (UAE Team Emirates - XRG), Andrew August (Ineos Grenadiers), Jonathan Vervenne (Soudal-QuickStep) and Ådne Holter (Uno-X Mobility) (Image credit: Getty Images)
A hot pursuit from Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe and NSN then materialized, but the proliferation of roundabouts, twists and turns and - at least on the TV coverage - some rather erratic time gaps did nothing to help the chasers.
Holter, Vervenne and Vermeersch forged on regardless of the advantage, and regardless, too of August's presence on their back wheel, quietly gaining odds on his chance of victory with every turn of the pedals given he had no reason to collaborate.
Swinging out of the left-hand bend and onto the finishing straight, the quartet's advantage had shrivelled to barely 10 seconds, only for Vervenne to deliver one more strong turn to ensure that 300 metres from the line and they were just in position to fight for the victory, albeit by the bare minimum.
That was exactly when August launched a long, determined drive up the centre, and for all the other three tried to regain contact, the 20-year-old US rider had his first-ever career win waiting for him, and he was never going to give up on that kind of opportunity.
After Thursday's time trial was partly neutralised, Saturday's toughest stage of the race from La Nucia to Teulada will almost certainly decide the overall.
Run over familiar training roads for many of the top squads' winter camps in the region, and even including the well-known ascent of Col de Rates early on, the day will almost certainly be decided by the short but very tough Puig de la Lorença in the last 15 kilometres and a very technical run-in to Teulada that follows.
Alasdair Fotheringham has been reporting on cycling since 1991. He has covered every Tour de France since 1992 bar one, as well as numerous other bike races of all shapes and sizes, ranging from the Olympic Games in 2008 to the now sadly defunct Subida a Urkiola hill climb in Spain. As well as working for Cyclingnews, he has also written for The Independent, The Guardian, ProCycling, The Express and Reuters.
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