Race leader Romain Grégoire (Groupama-FDJ) won the hilltop finish of stage 3 at the Tour du Limousin-Périgord. With less than 500 metres remaining on the ascent of Bort les Orgues, Grégoire accelerated past Jesus Herrada (Movistar) for his second victory in three days. Oscar Rodriguez (Movistar) followed the race leader with the late pass to take second by one second. Herrada settled for third, three seconds back and Benoît Cosnefroy (AG2R Citroën Team) was fourth, 9 seconds off the winning pace.
The top three in the GC remained in the same order, but with the time bonus for the stage win, Grégoire now moves ahead of Cosnefroy by 38 seconds. Michael Storer (Groupama-FDJ) continues in third, now 50 seconds back. Herrada moves up three positions to fourth overall, just six seconds behind Storer.
Once all the breakaway riders were swept up at the base of the final ascent, Elie Gesbert (Arkéa)-Samsic) set the pace at the front of the reduced front group with 2km to go. Rodriguez launched his attack and opened a 10-second gap with 1km remaining. Then Grégoire took over.
A hilly stage 3 on more narrow roads covered 195.5km with just over 3,000 metres of undulating elevation gain. Three categorised climbs and four intermediate sprints were spread across the route. The finishing circuit began with an initial pass of the 6.3km Côte du Puy de Bort, the final categorised climb, then 25 twisting kilometres after the summit, the route repeated most of the climb, this time covering 5.8km at a 6% average gradient with a slight deviation to the hilltop finish.
Only minutes after the start in Sarran, one of the riders from Tuesday’s breakaway was at it again, Jean-Louis Le Ny (Nice Métropole Côte d 'Azure), and seven other riders, but it was a fruitless 5km. Across the next 30km, multiple attacks took place with no results.
Finally with 162km to go and the route closing on the first intermediate sprint, six riders successfully broke free of the peloton - Nicolas Debeaumarché (St-Michel-Mavic-Auber 93), Martin Marcellusi (Green Project-Bardiani CSF-Faizané), Callum MacLeod (A Bloc CT), Thomas Bonnet (TotalEnergies), Andrea Mifsud (Nice Métropole Côte d'Azur), and Alessandro Iacchi (Team Corratec).
After Mifsud took the sprint points on offer, the six riders pedalled with a purpose and opened a gap that went over one minute. From the peloton, Davide Bais (Eolo-Kometa) struck out on his own. Once the leaders were on the slopes of the first classified climb, with 136km to go, they had a 4:30 gap on the peloton, and Bais persevered one minute behind them.
With 100km to race, Bais was back in the peloton and the gap to the break was up to 5:50. That margin began to shrink 30km later.
With 50km remaining, Mifsud fell back from the lead group and the five out front saw their gap go under four minutes, Groupama-FDJ driving the pace with the yellow jersey.
On the first pass of Puy de Bort, Marcellusi accelerated away from his four breakaway companions and went clear by 20 seconds. From the peloton, Rein Taaramäe (Intermarché-Circus-Wanty) attacked and made inroads to what remained of the break.
Meanwhile, Marcellusi’s goal was accomplished to grab the KOM jersey with 20 points, five better than previous classification leader Andrea Pietrobon (Eolo-Kometa). His move opened a gap of 55 seconds across the summit on Debeaumarché and Bonnet, with Taaramäe another 20 seconds back. A scattered peloton was 1:50 back.
On the lower slopes of the final ascent with under 5km to go, Marcellusi held a slight 13-second advantage on the duo of Debeaumarché and Taaramäe. The peloton soon swooped up all three with a full-on push, race leader Grégoire riding third wheel behind second-placed Cosnefroy and third-placed Storer close by.
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