Crocodile Trophy: Second stage win for Bouchard

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On stage 3 of the Crocodile Trophy, it was Canadian Leandre Bouchard (BH SR Suntour KMC) getting the better of compatriot Andrew L'Esperance (Forward Racing-Norco) at the Tepon Equestrian Park. The duo finished almost an hour ahead of Hiroyuki Okamoto (Inpulse).

In the battle for the general classification, Bouchard holds a 1:29 minute lead over L'Esperance with Russian Anton Sintsov (JBG-2 Team) third at 1:11:41.

"Today was a very challenging course – anyone who finishes today without any injury and still pedalling... power to them, it's awesome!" L'Esperance said of the stage. "I just rode steady and I figured Leandre would make it back up to me and he did together with Erik Dekker. It's a beautiful place! Even though we're racing, we definitely took some time to look around today. Once we got on top of those mountain tops we were like, wow, this is beautiful! Yesterday, actually, we saw some kangaroos, or maybe big wallabies, they were following us in the woods, that was cool."

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Haley Smith (Norco Factory Team) finished the stage and continued to be the only elite woman in the race. Smith has never previously ridden a marathon stage race and explained her motivation for racing the Crocodile Trophy.

"Well, I love Disneyworld. It's somewhere I've gone since I was a little girl. And we made a deal that if we win enough prize money we would go to Disneyworld in Florida. It's totally illogical, but it's been a fun motivation for us," said Smith, who is a training parter with L'Esperance.

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