Lidl-Trek scored a fourth consecutive stage win on Saturday with Jonathan Milan earning the sprint victory in Schwenningen on stage 3 at the Deutschland Tour.
Race leader Mads Pedersen ushered his teammate Milan to the front of the bunch at the 1km banner and the Italian accelerated through the final righ-hand bend for an uncontested third victory in four days.
Max Kanter (Astana Qazaqstan) was second in the sprint and Jordi Meeus (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) took third.
Pedersen held on to the overall lead, 12 seconds in front of Tobais Halland Johannessen (Uno-X Mobility) in second overall, who also leads the young rider classification. Danny van Poppel (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), who finished third overall last year, moved up to third overall, 19 seconds back.
"It was a super hard day. We started with this climb after around 35km and from there until now I was really on the limit always," Milan said. "The parcours was always up and down and we had a few attacks on the climbs after that first one. The guys in front, in the breakaway, were riding strongly, and chasing them in the last kilometers was pretty hard.
"The plan was to come to a sprint today but, of course, if one of us was feeling better than the other than we would adapt the situation but everything went perfectly. It means a lot to have Mads lead me out like that. He did one kilometer of lead out so it's even not enough to say he did a perfect job."
The longest stage of the five-day race at 212km, Saturday’s adventure was the queen stage with close to 3,000 metres of elevation gain over a series of small climbs, four of them categorised.
Five riders got away across the climbing in the first half of the race and gained as much as six minutes. Jørgen Nordhagen Visma-Lease a Bike), Taco van der Hoorn (Intermarché-Wanty), Marius Mayrhofer (Tudo Pro Cycling), and Mattéo Vercher (TotalEnergies) and Dawit Yemane (Team Bike Aid) saw their 4:40 advantage begin to dwindle.
Nordhagen secured more KOM points at the fourth climb at Albstadt, with 77km to go, while mountain classification leader Yemane called it a day on the front. Nordhagen would finish as the new mountains leader.
As a trio of intermediate sprints approached for the final 51km of the race, It was nearing the first sprint line in Schörzingen with 62km to go that Santiago Buitrago (Bahrain Victorious) attacked from the peloton to take up the chase of the four riders ahead, who had a margin of 1:45. He tagged on with 36.5km to go, the peloton 1:32 back.
The first of two sprints in Schwenningen marked the start of an 8km finish circuit, completed two times before the checkered flag drops for the finish in the village. From the quintet, Buitrago took the sprint points but the five were only interested in holding off the peloton with 23km to race, the gap dipping below a minute for the first time.
With 15.7km to go, Vercher and Buitrago made a move to separate from the other three with a steady pace to create separation, but the move only lasted 4km as the race came back together and set up for a bunch sprint.
On the bell lap, Van Poppel took the 3 bonus seconds on offer for the final mid-race sprint ahead of Luke Lamperti (Soudal-QuickStep). Lidl-Trek just had an interest in another stage win, and they massed as the front, race leader Pedersen riding behind Amanuel Ghebreigzabhier and Milan third wheel.
Results
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