Joe Martin Stage Race: Samuel Boardman wins stage 3 time trial

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Clarke maintains overall lead after uphill effort in Devil's Den State Park

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Sam Boardman (L39ION of Los Angeles) set the fastest time of the day, his first UCI victory.
Sam Boardman (L39ION of Los Angeles) set the fastest time of the day, his first UCI victory.(Image credit: Snowy Mountain Photography)

Samuel Boardman (L39ION of Los Angeles) won the stage 3 uphill time trial at Joe Martin Stage Race on Saturday. He covered the 4.8km route in 9:37 minutes beating runner-up Alexander White (CS Velo Racing) and Tyler Stites (Project Echelon Racing) by two seconds.

"I'm very surprised. I wasn't looking at the numbers, I was looking down occasionally to see how much distance I had left, but today was purely based on feel," Boardman said. "I didn't actually find out until a competitor and friend came up to me a gave me a high five and congrats, and I said, 'for what?' and he said, 'I think you won.' So, I'm very surprised. I was able to go into today very relaxed and very chill and it genuinely helped keep my mind and body at ease. It's so easy to come into a time trial and stress about how many seconds you're going to lose to this person or that person, relative to the GC battle, but I didn't have any of that on my mind. I just wanted to go out and go hard."

Stites started day in third overall at 29 seconds back, and he moved up to second place overall after the time trial. His performance, however, was not enough to unseat stage 1 winner and overall race leader Jonathan Clarke (Wildlife Generation Pro Cycling Team). 

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Although he lost time in the time trial, finishing 18th at 19 seconds behind the stage winner, Clarke still leads the overall race by 12 seconds ahead of Stites and 13 seconds ahead of teammate Noah Granigan. 

The Joe Martin Stage Race concludes at stage 4 on Sunday in Fayetteville.

"This is the best I could ask for, for me, I'm not the best time triallist," Clarke said in a post-race interview. "Granigan and Stites are close [on time] and in second and third overall. We've had a pretty active first couple of days so the legs are going to be tired. The goal was to stay up there. So, hopefully [tomorrow] Granigan can take care of some bonus sprints, and he can actually still win. I don't know how many bonus sprints there are tomorrow, maybe three or two. We'll defend, and try to stop Stites from gaining seconds, which might mean Granigan sprinting, and we have other fast guys here."

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