Tour of the Basque Country: Schachmann wins stage 3 in Estibaliz

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Maximilian Schachmann (Bora-Hansgrohe) claimed a second stage victory and added to his overall lead in the Tour of the Basque Country on stage 3, sprinting up the final climb in Estibaliz to top Diego Ulissi (UAE Team Emirates) and Enrico Battaglin (Katusha-Alpecin).

A crash with 6km to go took down a large portion of the front of the peloton, including green jersey holder, stage 2 winner and second-placed overall Julian Alaphilippe (Deceuninck-Quickstep) and third-placed Michal Kwiatkowski (Team Sky). As a result, Schachmann’s lead ballooned to 33 seconds over Ion Izagirre (Astana), with teammate Patrick Konrad now third on the same time.

Now with more comfortable buffer in the rankings, Schachmann thanked his team but acknowledged that there are still some difficult stages to come.

“I don’t know what to say. I have to say thank you to my team. I knew I didn’t come to the team as a big star but I get 150 per cent support, as you saw in the finale. I could just trust them and I had the legs.

“I haven’t had yellow many times but I think it’s special to win in yellow,” Schachmann said. When asked whether or not he can win the overall, he replied, “I don’t know. I’m surprised myself. We have two super hard stages coming up. I hope my battery is still full enough those two days.”

Stage 3 of the Tour of the Basque Country took riders 191.4km from Sarriguren to Estibaliz over some lumpy terrain, with the category 2 ascent of Goni coming just 26km into the day.

The tough start was a perfect launching pad for a breakaway, and Ben King (Dimension Data), Bruno Armirail (Groupama-FDJ), Julien Bernard, Toms Skujins (Trek-Segafredo), Garikoitz Bravo (Euskadi-Murias), Nicolas Sessler, José Fernandes (Burgos-BH), José Joaquin Rojas (Movistar) duly obliged, pulling out a gap of several minutes on the peloton, led by Bora-Hansgrohe for race leader Maximilian Schachmann.

The early part of the stage also saw a number of crashes, with Rohan Dennis (Bahrain-Merida) and Steve Cummings (Dimension Data) abandoning.

The category 3 Opakua climb with 60km to go spelled the end of Fernandes’ time in the move as the peloton began eating into the escapees’ advantage, bringing the gap to 1:30 by the top, where Bernard swept up the points but was unable to wrest the polka dot jersey from Bravo’s shoulders.

The long undulating descent and some haggling in the peloton kept the breakaway’s gap over a minute for the next 40km before the peloton came to life. Riding a tailwind and eyeing a punchy uphill finale for Alaphilippe, the Deceuninck-Quickstep team pulled the gap below 40 seconds with 17km to go, and the hopes of the seven leaders staying away began to look bleak.

The leaders weren’t about to give up so easily, and worked together to hold their lead, distancing Sessler, Bernard and Bravo as they fought against the inevitable. A big crash disrupted the chase with 6km remaining, with Alaphilippe out of the race and Enric Mas caught out outside the protected 3km mark.

Mitchelton-Scott took over the pace making with Movistar to finally reel in the escapees with 4km to go as Deceuninck-Quickstep came together to limit Mas’ losses. Schachmann was lucky to miss the chaos and positioned himself well in the final metres and used a powerful sprint to take out the stage win and add to his overall lead.

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