Fabio Aru (Astana) stunned the sprinters on stage 3 of the Criterium du Dauphine when his late attack secured him victory by just two seconds. The Italian held barely more than 10 seconds at any one time but he pushed his limits on the final descent to take the morale-boosting victory.
It was a slow-burning stage with a three-man breakaway consisting of Niki Terpstra (Etixx-QuickStep), Thomas De Gendt (Lotto-Soudal) and Dmitri Claeys (Wanty-Groupe Gobert) getting away in the opening kilometres. The action lit up on the descent of the penultimate climb as the break was brought to heel after building a maximum advantage of six minutes.
Race leader Alberto Contador (Tinkoff) had said at the start of the day that he would like to pass off his leader’s jersey for a few days to conserve energy and it looked like he might just do that when a late mechanical problem forced a bike change. Contador re-joined the peloton and finished the stage on Roman Kreuziger’s bike.
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