Tour of Oman: Van Avermaet wins stage 3

Greg Van Avermaet (BMC Racing Team) won the charge up the Wadi Dayqah Dam to claim victory on stage 3 of the Tour of Oman. Rui Costa (UAE Team Emirates) was second with Alexey Lutsenko (Astana) taking third for the second consecutive day.

The stage win saw Van Avermaet move up from second overall to take hold of the race leader's jersey. Lutsenko moved up to second at 11 seconds and former race leader Nathan Haas, who finished seven seconds down, dropped to third with at 14 second gap.

Astana led a vicious charge up the final climb, which topped out 8.5km from the finish. BMC quickly moved to the front of the field and kept up the blistering pace, helping their captain to the win. Van Avermaet managed to rip clear on the drag towards the finish, crossing the line with a significant gap over his rivals.

"I am always happy to win and especially in Oman after so many years. I think the team did a perfect job. We came at the right moment on the descent with 3km to go, and they put me in a perfect position so I could wait for the perfect moment," Van Avermaet said. "It was at the hardest point of the climb that I went full gas, and I just hoped that no one could follow and that's what happened so I was really happy that I could cross the line first.

"It was a hard finish, but I knew it from 2013 when I was second here. I had better legs this time though as I was able to go at the moment that I wanted to and then it was about getting to the finish as fast as possible and hoping that nobody could follow. It was a good finish for me and a really nice win. It was also nice for me to finish off the good work of the team.

"It's a nice extra to take the leader's jersey, and we will see what happens, but for the moment, I am really happy with this stage win. That was the most important thing for me."

Second-place finisher Costa called it “a good result which is important for my morale: in the past two weeks I felt sick, I'm not at the top of the fit, but this performance confirms that I'm on the good way to a high level".

The stage was marked by a long breakaway with Loic Chetout (Cofidis), Xandro Meurisse (Wanty-Groupe Gobert), Wouter Wippert (Roompot-Nederlandse Loterij) and Nicholas Schultz (Caja Rural-Seguros RGA). They got away within the first five kilometers and the last were caught again with only 20 kilometers left.

After finishing second on the stage 2 sprint, Van Avermaet left nothing to chance. His team took charge in the final kilometres and he rode to his first win of the season with an easy margin in a difficult finale. He crossed the line with a three-second lead over the next four riders, with yesterday's winner Haas leading in the next group at seven seconds.

How it unfolded

The peloton rolled out from the University of Technology on what promised to be a hot 175.9 kilometres to the Wadi Dayqah Dam. Missing was Sunweb’s Soren Kragh Andersen, who suffered a concussion after two heavy crashes in stage three.

A break group formed almost immediately, with Loic Chetout (Cofidis), Xandro Meurisse (Wanty-Groupe Gobert), Wouter Wippert (Roompot-Nederlandse Loterij) and Nicholas Schultz (Caja Rural-Seguros RGA) building up a one-minute gap after only five kilometres.

The gap had jumped to nearly five minutes after the first of three ranked climbs and the first intermediate sprint. That was getting too much for the field, so they pulled it back down to 3:10 with 100 km to go, and it dropped as low as 2:20 before going back up to three minutes as the climbing started with 75 km left.

The gap dropped again as the hills went on. The Quriyat climb with 48 km to go proved too much for Wippert, who had to drop from the lead group.

Soon there were only two. Chetout won the final intermediate sprint. Having already won the two climbs and the first sprint as well, he felt he could spare himself the final and fell back. That left Meurisse and Schultz with a 1:30 gap and 35 km to go.

That gap fell quickly as the final 9.4% gradient climb up the Wadi Dayqah Dam approached. The day’s final official climb came at 10 km from the line, topping out 1.5 km later. And with 20km to go, Meurisse and Schultz were caught by the field, Katusha-Alpecin having set a very high pace to reel them in.

The field charged up the climb, dropping riders mercilessly off the back. Astana dominated the proceedings, crossing over the top first with Jan Hirt, Omar Fraile and Tanel Kangert.

Only about 50 riders were left in the field as they went into the closing kilometres, with BMC moving to the front and successfully carrying out their mission. The entire peloton splintered, crossing the finish line in small groups, with two of the day’s escapees finally coming in over 13 minutes down.

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