Tour de France 2019: Julian Alaphilippe storms to stage three victory with brilliant late solo break
Updates from stage three of the Tour
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Julian Alaphilippe soloed to victory on stage three of the Tour de France to take the yellow jersey off Mike Teunissen.
The Deceuninck-Quick Step rider attacked on the final categorised climb of the 215km stage from Binche to Epernay and raced clear to take the win 26 seconds ahead of the pack, which was led over the line by Team Sunweb's Michael Matthews.
With Jumbo-Visma's Teunissen having been dropped from the main pack, that was enough for Alaphilippe to take the yellow jersey for the first time in his career. Re-live the stage:
For Egan Bernal and Geraint Thomas, it was a good day in the black and red of Team Ineos, finishing second on the team time-trial and gaining significant time on rivals like Astana’s Jakob Fuglsang, who crashed on stage one, Adam Yates of Mitchelton-Scott and Romain Bardet.
But they lost 20 seconds to Jumbo-Visma’s Steven Kruijswijk, who is considered one of their main rivals for this Tour having finished fifth overall last year.
Potential stage winners
Julian Alaphillipe – A master of hilly stages like this one, Alaphilippe will be determined to pick up King of the Mountains points, but he may find that this route is not quite brutal enough to leave behind rivals with a faster finish.
Wout van Aert – Another one of Jumbo-Visma’s brilliant stable of riders who specialises in this kind of one-day challenge.
Greg van Avermaet – The Belgian is currently in the polka dots but could have sights on an upgrade to the yellow jersey here if he can escape up the road and win the stage.
Alejandro Valverde – The reigning road race world champion suffered a little in yesterday’s team time-trial but this is the kind of opportunist’s day in which he thrives.
So, an update on the state of play of stage three. There are 85km to go to Epernay and the five-man breakaway have a lead of around three minutes, having been pulled back in by a combination of Quick-Step, aiming to set up Julian Alaphilippe for the finish, and Jumbo-Visma, who want their man Mike Teunissen to keep hold of the yellow jersey. Those riders out in front: Tim Wellens (Lotto-Soudal), Paul Ourselin (Direct Energie), Yoann Offredo (Wanty-Groupe Gobert), Anthony Delaplace (Samsic) and Stephane Rossetto (Cofidis).
80km to go: Of those five out in front, none really have the pedigree to go and win this stage apart from Tim Wellens, who has two Giro d'Italia stages in his palmares and could feasibly mount an attack at the finish. But their lead is shrinking, and it seems unlikely those teams with their eye the stage win will be letting him go.
70km to go: The leading quintet are being pulled in quite quickly now, and their lead is down to less than two minutes for the first time since they zipped up the road a couple of hours ago.
A couple of minor crashes in the peloton over the past few KM. No one seems to be seriously hurt but it's enough for a few riders to need to hang back for new bikes or at least a helping hand from their teams.
Jack Haig (Mitchelton-Scott) and Lars Bak (Dimension Data) as well as Patrick Bevin (CCC) all seemed to hit the deck during the past few minutes, but they seem to be OK.
50km to go: These crashes are materialising because riders are trying to get near the front of the bunch for this tricky finale into Epernay.
45km to go... and Tim Wellens attacks! He is the standout rider in that lead group and he's decided to go for it, bursting up the first of these four categorised climbs which pepper the road to the finish. He's two and a half minutes clear of the peloton.
35km to go: The side-effect of Tim Wellens going on the attack at this moment is that is sweeping up the King of the Mountains points on offer, which means even if he doesn't win this stage, at least he is likely to get the compensation of taking the polka dot jersey from Greg van Avermaet's back.
30km to go: He's committing to this push for glory, is Wellens. This is some superhuman effort from the big Belgian and he's pulled this kind of victory off before, most notably at the Giro d'Italia in 2016. But to close this out from such a distance, with hoards of chasers closing in on him, would be something very special.
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