Tour de Pologne: Teuns wins in Szczyrk

Dylan Teuns (BMC) parlayed a late attack on the steep finishing climb to Szczyrk on stage 3 of the Tour de Pologne into his first WorldTour victory, but fell shy of moving into the race lead thanks to a tenacious climb by Bora-Hansgrohe's Peter Sagan. 

Thanks to the time bonus, Sagan moved back into the yellow jersey with a six second lead on Teuns. Sagan's teammate Rafal Majka was third across the line, and now sits in third place overall, 12 seconds off the lead of Sagan.

An impressively calculated charge for the line earned the young Belgian climber Teuns the victory on the first uphill finish of the 2017 Tour de Pologne. The climb came at the end of a lumpy trek through the hills of southern Poland, with over 2,000 metres of vertical climbing and four classified ascents before the finish.

Teuns followed Orica's Adam Yates across to early attacker Valerio Conti (UAE Team Emirates) on the punchy final ascent and then soloed clear, confirming the prowess in steep climbs he showed earlier this year by finishing third in La Fleche Wallonne.

Although this wooded ascent above the town of Szcyrk was not quite the Mur de Huy, the narrow, twisting finale in Pologne still had some segments of up to 17 percent and Teuns had to calculate his effort and positioning well in order to be sure of victory.

"I have to thank my team, they did a great job of pulling back the earlier attacks and putting me in the right position," Teuns said.

"This is my fourth win after taking two stages and the overall of the Tour de Wallonie in a week, my first ProTour win, so this is really something."

An early seven man break of the day, containing Maxime Monfort (Lotto-Soudal), Remi Cavagna (Quick-Step Floors), Sebastien Reichenbach (FDJ), Jose Goncalves (Katusha-Alpecin), Bert-Jan Lindeman (LottoNl-Jumbo), Maciej Paterski (CCC-Polsat Sprandi) - for the third time in three days - and Adam Stachowiak (Poland) did seem initially to have a chance of going clear, as they opened up a gap of almost four minutes.

But despite their impressive collaboration, solid teamwork by Bora-Hansgrohe saw the break finally fold on the second to last classified ascent, the Zameczek, some 35 kilometres from the line.

After a fast descent on somewhat rough road surfaces by a front group now down to some 30 riders, Katusha-Alpecin drove hard prior to a surge on the next climb, allowing Ilnur Zakarin to try and make a move. However, a solid chase by AG2R La Mondiale and - especially - BMC Racing Team's Rohan Dennis - concluded the Russian's surging attack, at which point second-year Orica-Scott pro Jack Haig made a gutsy move over the summit.

Haig had only 17 seconds as he stormed towards the foot of the final climb, hitting speeds of 95kph on the twisting downhill. Dennis and Team Sky's Diego Rosa kept the group of chasers within sight of the young Australian, though, and although he made it onto the lower slopes of the Szczyrk ascent, almost as soon as it turned right onto the steeper segment, Haig had to let the reduced peloton roar past.

Conti made a brave early attempt to clinch a second straight victory for his team after Sacha Modolo's victory in Katowice, but although he strung out the peloton, the Italian could not match the pace laid down by Adam Yates (Orica-Scott) when the Briton loped out of the pack.

However, Yates had Teuns shadowing him closely. "I didn't know which Yates it was, Adam or Simon but you don't let either of them get away on a climb like that," Teuns later told Cyclingnews - and on a long, steep right-hand bend, 200 metres from the top, Teuns overhauled the Briton and powered away for the victory.

A last minute acceleration by Peter Sagan, zigzagging through the fragmented chase group, allowed the Bora-Hansgrohe star to claim second place and the overall lead in a group also containing Majka and Team Sunweb's Wilco Kelderman.

The stage one winner in Krakow, Sagan continued to insist afterwards that teammate Majka, third on the line, remains Bora-Hansgrohe's main GC man for Tour de Pologne. But after such a strong performance on a tough climb and with bonus seconds on offer in sprint stages, Sagan surely remains a top candidate to repeat his 2011 overall victory in the week-long race.

Although Sagan will be a favourite on Tuesday's long, flat stage to Zabrze, the lead group on GC remain tightly packed, with all of the top 20 overall inside less than a minute behind the World Champion. Only when Pologne starts to hit the hillier stages, starting Wednesday, will a really picture of the overall start to emerge.

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