Spain’s Ivan Garcia Cortina of Team Bahrain McLaren on Tuesday took advantage of a late crash to emerge as surprise winner in a bunch sprint on stage three of the Paris-Nice cycling race.
Maximilian Schachmann of Bora-Hansgrohe, the German winner of the opening stage on Sunday, retained the overall lead after finishing 13th.
He swore to keep the yellow jersey as long as possible.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“I showed in the past I could ride good time trials,” he said in reference to stage four yesterday. “I want to defend this beautiful jersey, and I’m going give it my best in the time trial and then in the showdown in the hilly, mountain stages.”
The late fall on Tuesday caused a ripple of panic as Garcia Cortina and Slovak superstar Peter Sagan reacted quickest, speeding across the line first and second after a long 212.5km ride in wind and rain.
“I was surprised to beat Peter Sagan,” 24-year-old Garcia Cortina said of beating the peloton’s highest-paid rider.
“I managed to find the right place to go and just went full gas,” he added.
Garcia Cortina, a stage winner on the Tour of California, zipped past Sagan with relative ease, winning in 5 hours, 49 minutes, 55 seconds after most of the best speed finishers were caught out by the final fall on a day of crashes.
“There was a lot of tension and nervousness in the last kilometers,” Sagan said. “Most of the sprinters found themselves without many teammates in the final straight, it became a man-to-man battle.”
“Unfortunately, I found myself in the lead early on and I couldn’t keep the pace all the way to the line,” he added.
Irish sprinter Sam Bennett banged hips with another sprinter a couple of hundred meters from the finish, bounced into a barrier and, as he fell, became tangled up with Hugo Hofstetter, dragging the French rider down and causing problems for those around them.
Race commissioners ruled that Bennett shoulder-barged both Colombia’s Nairo Quintana and France’s Pierre Barbier as they battled for position approaching the finish, declared Bennett guilty of “incorrect behavior,” docked him ranking points and fined him 800 Swiss francs (US$854).
“It was the confusion with the bad crashes,” Schachmann said, summing up the stage. “But nobody was too badly injured.”
The early action on Tuesday was dominated by Belgian rider Tom Devriendt of Circus-Wanty Gobert, who embarked on a 180km solo break. He led by more than seven minutes, but was reeled in with 30km to go.
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