Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana: Van Avermaet wins stage 3

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Greg Van Avermaet took his first victory of the season for the new-look CCC Team, winning the uphill sprint on stage 3 of the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana.

The Belgian launched his sprint off the wheel of Luis Leon Sanchez (Astana) and took the victory ahead of the previous day's winner Matteo Trentin (Mitchelton-Scott), while Sanchez hung on for third. World champion Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) finished fourth in Chera.

Edvald Boasson Hagen (Dimension Data) stayed safely inside the front group over the last ascent to the finish line, and retained his lead in the overall classification for a third day. He heads into stage 4 with a five-second margin over runner-up Ion Izagirre (Astana) and eight seconds on third-placed Dylan Teuns (Bahrain-Merida).

"I was really happy to win here for sure. It's always great to start the season off with a win on a hard parcours," said Van Avermaet.

"It was difficult and everyone was on the limit. However, I felt really strong. The team did a really good effort on the climb before so it was down to me to do a good result. I was in a really good position on the last switchback, it was perfect and I started my sprint and hoped nobody came round me. It's really good to start the season like that."

On a day of relentlessly undulating terrain and with a viciously technical finish in the tiny mountain village of Chera, Van Avermaet overhauled Spain's Sanchez to claim his first individual victory since the Tour de Yorkshire last May.

Trentin winner of Thursday's sprint finish in Alicante, ran Van Avermaet the closest in the finale. But the Belgian's driving blast up Chera's main street was simply unmatchable.

Van Avermaet's teammates made a sterling contribution near the end of a lumpy day's racing and a final draggy ascent where Israel Cycling Academy's Ben Hermans made a potentially decisive late move.

But that challenge was clamped down by CCC's Alessandro De Marchi and after Movistar tried to keep control of affairs for Valverde, who was blocked in at the finish, Van Avermaet was able to come to the fore.

Boasson Hagen remains in the overall lead as the race now faces its most decisive stage on Saturday with the brutally difficult ascent to Santa Lucia hermitage.

How it unfolded

On a long, difficult day's racing through the Sierras on the eastern side of Valencia, the peloton was lucky enough to be racing in warm, dry conditions. The good weather encouraged a large early break with 10 riders making an early move.

Continental squad Euskadi Basque Country-Murias were the only team with more than one rider in the move, Cyril Barthe and Fernando Barcelo Aragon. The break contained Julien Duval (AG2R La Mondiale), Awet Andemeskel (Israel Cycling Academy), Preben Van Hecke (Sport Vlaanderen-Baloise), Vladislav Kulikov (Gazprom-Rusvelo), Raul Alarcon (W52-FC Porto), Mauricio Moreira (Caja Rural-Seguros RGA), Diego Lopez Fuentes (Equipo Euskadi) and Diego Rubio Hernandez (Burgos-BH).

The large size of the break, combined with relentlessly rolling terrain and a bunch that was initially in no mood to chase, allowed the move to build up a buffer of over seven minutes in little over 90 minutes racing.

Team Dimension Data had put enough riders on the front to contain the gap as the race rolled through the finish village of Chera for a first time, with the race tackling a seemingly interminable series of steady climbs - five of them classified third category - in the densely forested mountain ranges of western Valencia.

Boasson Hagen remained steadily in the fourth spot for much of the first two-thirds of the undulating 194-kilometre stage. However, as the race reached its final hour and Astana added their weight to the chase, the lead began to tumble quickly. With 20 kilometres left to go, the 10 riders' advantage had plummeted to under two minutes and was dropping fast, and the collaboration, too, was beginning to crumble.

AG2R's Duval was initially one of the keenest to keep the move alive, taking a couple of long turns on the front as the race tacked the last classified climb of the Sot de Chera. But it was finally Spanish veteran Raul Alarcon (W52-FC Porto), double winner of the Tour of Portugal, who succeeded in opening up a gap, followed by Van Hecke and the two Euskadi-Murias riders.

The fast, narrow mountain descent to the foot of the final climb enabled the break to eke out its advantage a little longer, with Van Hecke taking some long turns even as Movistar and CCC began to mass at the front. But it was to no avail, and on the rolling draggy climb up to Chera, the last remnants of the break were finally reeled in.

Hermans launched a powerful attack, but De Marchi quickly was on his trail, and then Salvatore Puccio (Team Sky) and Movistar's Nelson Oliveira bridged across, stifling the life out of the attack. Movistar initially kept control in the finale, and Valverde and Boasson Hagen were both near the front as the road flattened and then swooped down before the highly technical finish. But at that point, rather than Valverde or the Norwegian, Van Avermaet showed that he is more than ready for the fast-looming Classics with an impressively long final acceleration, all the way through to the win.

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