In a near carbon copy finish to stage 1, Jonathan Milan (lidl-Trek) doubled up on wins at the Renewi Tour on stage 3, kicking away from Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) from the wheel of the Belgian’s lead-out man’ Mathieu van der Poel before holding his lead all the way to the line in Ardooie.
Philipsen got his positioning all wrong in the final kilometre as he was forced to move up in the wheels to get up to Milan, who was waiting in Van der Poel’s slipstream to pounce, and when the Italian launched, Philipsen had to go the long way round his teammate and was unable to close the gap.
The pair had a clear gap on Max Walscheid (Jayco AlUla) who took third, as the two best sprinters left in this race, however, Milan continued his dominance with an 11th win of the season and seventh at WorldTour level.
“We are really happy, I was looking to do a nice result like this so we are all happy and I have to say thanks to all the team,” said Milan after the victory.
"It was a bit chaotic, the final, but they helped me in the best way as possible during the race so I’m proud of all of us and the work that we did today."
While freestyling for much of the final few hundred metres on the wheel of Van der Poel, Milan was aided brilliantly by Jasper Stuyven who did a “perfect” job to position him at the front of proceedings before the sprint.
“It was perfect, we knew it was crucial to take the chicane in the front position and he did super, super work to leave me in the front for sprinting so I’m just happy.”
Milan said he wasn’t going to think too much about the GC, despite taking 10 bonus seconds, however, he did cut his deficit to overall leader Alec Segaert (Lotto Dstny) to 23 seconds with two stages remaining and a possible bunch sprint on stage 4.
Segaert finished safely in the bunch to maintain a 7-second lead on Magnus Sheffield (Ineos Grenadiers) in second. But there is still a lot of tough terrain to navigate in the last two days, with possible strong winds coming tomorrow en route from Oostburg to Aalter and a brutally tough Classics stage still to race on stage 5 to Geraardsbergen.
How it unfolded
With an almost guaranteed sprint stage on the cards at stage 3 of the Renewi Tour, the opening phases saw a similar break to that from stage 1 go up the road, with two of the five men from day one getting back in the break, Jordy Bouts and Axel Huens (TDT-Unibet).
Joining them to make up the five were Aaron van Poucke, Ward Vanhoof (Team Flanders-Baloise) and Warre Vangheluwe (Soudal-QuickStep), with the break building a gap of more than three minutes.
It became an all-Belgian breakaway when Frenchman Huens dropped back to the peloton inside the final kilometre, with the now four in front closing in on the local circuits around the finish in Ardooie, where they crossed the finish line for the first of six times with a 2:40 lead.
With Tim Merlier (Soudal-QuickStep) joining the likes of Dylan Groenewegen (Jayco AlUla) and Olav Kooij (Visma-Lease a Bike) on the list of headline sprinters to leave the Renewi Tour, Lidl-Trek, Alpecin-Dceuninck and Lotto Dstny took up the mantle of pacing for Milan, Philipsen and De Lie, respectively.
The gap to the break fell below the minute mark in the chase inside the final 35km and when they reached the green kilometre and the final 20km, this was further halved.
Vanhoof took the maximum nine seconds on offer from the three sprint points having started the day as the closest on GC, bringing his gap down from 59 to 50 seconds on Segaert.
The peloton got the bell in Ardooie under 30 seconds behind the faltering break and it was all but done before the certain sprint finish, outside of a final late burst by local lad Vangheluwe off the front with 12km to go.
Vangheluwe eked out a lead as big as 20 seconds but had no chance when the full lead-outs started behind, with his effort eventually extinguished with 4km to go by the Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale and Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe-led peloton.
The washing machine effect saw the leaders of the peloton change several times in the run for home, with both Lidl-Trek and Alpecin-Deceuninck controlling things at times for their top sprinters.
But into the final kilometre, it was Milan who had found the wheel of the World Champion Van der Poel, not his teammate Philipsen, allowing the Italian to benefit from the Dutchman’s expert lead-out skills and launch for the victory.
Philipsen avoided crashing into Van der Poel as he went around him and hampered his sprint, however, he didn’t have enough top-end speed to even alongside Milan in the run for home.
Results
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