Vachon wins Paris-Bourges

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Bretagne-Schuller's Florian Vachon scored his third victory of 2012 in Paris-Bourges. The Frenchman out-jumped the sprinters, leaving Nacer Bouhanni (FDJ-BigMat) to beat John Degenkolb (Argos-Shimano) for the runner-up position.

Vachon, 27, won a stage of Criterium International earlier this year and the Classic Loire Atlantique.

The hilly, late-season 1.1 race kicked off with a three-rider breakaway from AG2R's Gregor Gazvoda, Preben Van Hecke (Topsport Vlaanderen-Mercator) and perennial escapee Michael Mørkøv (Saxo Bank-Tinkoff).

The trio built up a lead of five minutes at best, but as the race wore on the gap slowly dropped, falling to three minutes with 75km to go.

Gazvoda was the first rider to be tailed off on the Col du Graveron with 65km remaining, leaving his two companions to fight ahead with little more than a minute's lead on the next climb, the Cote de Bue.

They held the much-reduced peloton to 18 seconds at the top of the Cote de Chapelotte, when the attacks from the peloton ripped the race to shreds.

It was with 28km remaining that the pair were finally caught by Gaël Malacarne (Bretagne-Schuller) and Jakob Fuglsang (Radioshack-Nissan).

Now with extra manpower, the four riders began to open up the lead again, stretching their advantage to 35 seconds over the chasing group with 12km left to race. But it was not enough.

A late attack by Fabrice Jeandesboz (Saur Sojasun) briefly made the group five, but they were all soon caught by the chasing group of 30 riders.

Vachon anticipated the sprint, going clear ahead of the finale to hold off the charge by Bouhanni and Degenkolb by a comfortable margin.

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