Following Nacer Bouhanni’s relief as he claimed his first victory at the Circuit de la Sarthe-Pays de la Loire, his former team FDJ experienced the same feeling as Anthony Roux delivered in Angers a long-awaited success for Marc Madiot’s outfit. The Frenchman, a former overall winner of the event in 2011, outsprinted Quentin Jaurégui of AG2R-La Mondiale and Europcar’s superstar Thomas Voeckler, who led the trio to avoiding the highly expected mass sprint finish.

“I’m very happy for the team and for myself,” said Roux, who leads the overall classification by five seconds over Jaurégui and eight over Bouhanni ahead of the afternoon 7km time trial held in Angers at the exact same venue where the first-ever prologue of the Tour de France was held in 1967 with José Maria Errandonea winning over Raymond Poulidor.

“I wasn’t sure to win the sprint even though I knew I was the fastest of us three," Roux added. “I’m not in a great shape. I’ve been sidelined with bronchitis on a few occasions recently. I’ve been put on antibiotics four times in the past two months and it’s the case again today. But the Circuit de la Sarthe is a race I like very much. Every time I’ve done it, I’ve performed somehow. Even though I’m not at 100 per cent of my abilities this time around, I’ll see what I can do after analyzing the results sheet tonight. By experience, we know that the leader after the time trial often loses the lead the day after.”

Voeckler was prompt to recall that Roux won the race and the queen stage of Pré-en-Pail, “although it was not with the uphill finish at the Mont des Avaloirs like now”, outlined the leader of Europcar. “After I attacked with Jaurégui this morning, I heard that Anthony was riding solo behind us and I had mixed feelings. I thought it was great news because he’s a strong rouleur but I also knew that he’d beat me in the sprint.”

Voeckler made sure the breakaway wouldn’t take too much of a lead too early. Their advantage didn’t exceed 1:30 but was still 45 seconds with one lap of 7km to go. “There weren’t 36,000 solutions to avoid the regrouping," he explained. “We had to accelerate not too early and not too late, so we had to wait for the final circuit to give it all. Our gap was big enough so we could watch each other before sprinting, we weren’t threatened by the return of the peloton. There had to be a winner and a disappointed man, I’m that one today, maybe the young one [Jaurégui] is happy with his second place but for myself, finishing third out of three isn’t genius.”

Voeckler maintained that Pierre Rolland is Europcar’s main card to play for the overall classification at the Circuit de la Sarthe. “Most of the times, there’s a change of leader after the time trial," Roux agreed as the race might only begin after the show against the clock by Movistar’s Adriano Malori, Alex Dowsett and co.

The riders face a 6.8km afternoon time trial around Angers, followed by two other road stages on Thursday and Friday.

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