'Seven times better than winning alone' – Visma-Lease a Bike win Tour de France team time trial dress rehearsal on Tour Auvergne Rhône-Alpes stage 3
Matteo Jorgenson powers home for the Dutch team as Alex Beaudin saves yellow by a whisker
Matteo Jorgenson sprinted solo through the uphill finish at Perreux to secure victory for Visma-Lease a Bike at the Tour Auvergne Rhône-Alpes stage three team time trial.
It saw the Dutch team place 10 seconds ahead of Netcompany-Ineos, who suffered a dropped chain with Oscar Onley that may well have proved crucial in the final reckoning.
EF Education-EasyPost were third, with their French rider Alex Beaudin clinging onto the leader's yellow jersey by 12 seconds after a gutsy solo assault on the finishing climb.
It offered a thrilling glimpse four weeks into the future, when the Tour de France kicks off in Barcelona with a stage of exactly the same format – including individual timing for each rider rather than whole teams.
Afterwards Jorgenson declared it "seven times better than winning on your own". "Because you get the moment afterwards together, which in cycling you don't often get. It's a really cool discipline," he said, "and a really nice day."
"It didn't really go as planned at all," Jorgenson said. "We lost Wout [van Aert] really early, he wasn't feeling super. And then Ben flatted and almost crashed on the main descent of the day so that was a hairy moment. I think we adapted well to the situation and we rearranged things and readjusted.
"Honestly I think the last 10K downhill we couldn't have gone any faster – Bruno [Armirail], Edo [Affini], Per [Strand Hagenes], were all incredibly strong and I was given a free ride to the last climb."
A victim of a collarbone-breaking crash at Amstel Gold in April, Jorgenson said it was great to be "back on top" and that the performance boded well for the rest of the race, which finishes on Sunday 14 June.
"It feels good to win a race. It's really nice after the spring I've had to come back and be on top again... I'm super happy to be part of this team and take this win together," he said.
How it happened
The race saw the teams compete over a hilly 28.4km (17.6 mile) course based on the town of Perreux in the Loire region. The first third of the parcours was made up of two long climbs, after which 12km of mostly downhill riding delivered the teams to the foot of a final, 800m haul up to the finish.
Jayco-AlUla set an early benchmark, breaking the 50kph barrier with their 33:46 with sprinter-rouleur Michael Matthews leading them in.
But as the later teams began to come through that time was bested, and then routed. Notable among the faster finishers as were Lidl-Trek (4th at 32s) with Juan Ayuso leading the team in alongside Matthias Skjelmose and Decathlon CMA CGM, with the closely watched Paul Seixas leading the team in solo to sixth place at 45sec.
Once Netcompany-Ineos and Visma-Lease a Bike were underway (the fourth and third-last teams respectively) it quickly became apparent that the stage win would likely come down to a battle between the pair. Netcompany-Ineos led comfortably through both time checks, only for Visma-Lease a Bike to run them close shortly afterwards.
Both teams had issues though – Visma earlier on, losing an off-colour Wout van Aert and then Ben Tulett to a puncture. Netcompany suffered a late problem when Oscar Onley derailed his chain, and the decision was made to wait – much to the chagrin of Onley's fellow GC hopeful Kévin Vauquelin, who displayed his displeasure via a series of arm-flails. It was a heaving, uphill sprint to the finish for both Netcompany and Visma, with the efforts of Onley and Vauquelin being pipped by Jorgenson for nine seconds only minutes later.
With Guillaume Martin leading Groupama-FDJ United in well down, the final effort was left to EF Education-EasyPost and their GC leader Alex Beaudin. They put in a thumping performance that was perhaps greater than the sum of their parts, but the final climb provided a nail-biting will-he, won't-he denouement as Beaudin romped away up the climb. His efforts were rewarded – he kept yellow and led the team in to a third-place finish.
Results to come...
