Route d'Occitanie: Egan Bernal wins stage 3

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Egan Bernal (Team Ineos) put down a significant marker on the road to his Tour de France defence with a victory on the Queen stage of the La Route d’Occitanie. The defending champion claimed stage 3 and the race lead on the final climb of the Col de Beyrède on a stage that had earlier included the Port de Balès and the Col de Peyresoude.

As a GC contest, the four-day La Route d’Occitanie was always likely to boil down to a fight on the Col de Beyrède, a Pyrenean climb of ferociously steep steps that's a close neighbour to the Col d'Aspin. With the Port de Balès and the Peyresourde preceding the Beyrède, it was, everyone insisted, a full-on mountain test, an ideal day for riders targeting the Tour de France to measure themselves against each other.

It produced a show of all-round strength from Team Ineos, Tour de France champion Egan Bernal winning the stage after each of his six teammates had played a key part in eroding the threat to the Colombian. 

Coming onto the final 11km ascent, Jonathan Castroviejo began the sorting process on the initial steep ramps. In the easier middle section, Chris Froome showed that he's getting back to his best with a devastating show of pace-making.

Then, as the climb kicked up into sections of 17%, Tao Geoghegan-Hart maintained the momentum, leaving Pavel Sivakov to set up Bernal for the finale. Coming into the final kilometre, the Colombian kicked clear on his own for his first victory of the season, his Russian teammate celebrating too as he finished second, with Astana's Aleksandr Vlasov taking third and Thibaut Pinot (Groupama-FDJ) fourth.

"I'm extremely happy with the victory," said Bernal, just after he'd been presented with the leader's jersey. "We've worked really hard for this, to be in good form, but despite that when you win it does come as a bit of a surprise. The team did a perfect job. The fact that I managed to show that we had an edge makes me very happy thinking ahead to the Tour de France. I think we really deserved the win today."

How it unfolded

The stage began with a group of eight riders on the attack: Benoît Cosnefroy (Ag2r la Mondiale), Harold Tejada (Astana), Julien Bernard (Trek-Segafredo), Georg Zimmermann (CCC Team), Matthieu Ladagnous (Groupama-FDJ), Lilian Calmejane (Total Direct Energie), Joan Bou (Euskaltel-Euskadi) and Julien Trarieux (Nippo-Delko). Their gap quickly reached more than 3 minutes before Ineos riders gathered at the front of the peloton and began to move it along more swiftly, allowing them little leeway for the rest of the day.

As the bunch closed in on the final climb, Bernard made a last effort to go it alone, but the Trek rider fell victim to the Ineos steam roller, just as their main GC rivals were about to do. 

"We had a plan with Egan. We didn't want to gamble too much. We hoped and believed that we had the strongest rider in the field and we played to his strength. Our plan was simply to make it really hard towards the end and launch Egan," explained Ineos DS Gabriel Rasch.

"It's our first race with some of the Tour team together and our first real test against some of the other very best climbers in the world, so it was definitely a good day."

Sivakov, who grew up near the start town of Saint Gaudens, had ridden the Beyrède three times before the race and knew it would be a hard test. "We didn't make any mistakes, the steam roller was going all day. Once the break had gone clear and we got to the Port de Balès, we started to ride quite hard. On the Peyresourde, the guys did an incredible job and then we finished the job on the final climb. It was superb," said the Russian.

"Coming onto the final climb, Castro started off, then Froomey took over on the more rolling section in the middle and he went so hard he put a lot of the other guys in the red. Tao did a great job on the first part of the steep section to the summit and then I did my bit on the front to set up Egan for an attack. It was exactly how we planned it this morning. The fact that we performed so well together is good to see given what lies ahead."

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