Tour of Slovakia: Halvorsen wins in photo finish on stage 3

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Kristoffer Halvorsen (Uno-X Pro Cycling Team) won Stage 3 of the Tour of Slovakia, squeezing past the left hand shoulder of Alvaro Hodeg (Deceuninck-Quickstep) to take victory. 

Challenged all the way to the line by a late acceleration from Kaden Groves (Team BikeExchange), Halvorsen faced an anxious wait after the finish as the commissaires consulted the photo finish extensively before declaring the winner.

A third-place finish for Peter Sagan (Bora-Hansgrohë), and the accompanying four bonus seconds this yielded, was enough for him to move into the overall race lead of his home tour. He now has a two-second lead over Hodeg.

How it unfolded

In the gloom of an early autumn afternoon, the peloton raced the 193.2km from Dolný Kubín to Považská Bystrica. Though the route was punctuated by five category 2 climbs, a bunch sprint was expected for the third consecutive day. 

Despite repeated attacks, including from those who had already animated the previous stages of the race such as Dylan Sunderland (Qhubeka NextHash) and Idar Andersen (Uno-X Pro Cycling Team), no breakaway was able to form before the first categorized climb and so  the peloton mopped up the points available.

After 30 kilometres of racing, it seemed that the day’s break had finally assembled as a group containing Andrea Garosio (Bardiani-CSF-Faizané) defending his polka-dot jersey for the third consecutive day, Jonas Abrahamsen (Uno-X Pro Cycling Team), Helmut Trettwer (Maloja Pushbikers), and Marcin Budzinski (Mazowsze Serci Poland) built up an advantage of 30 seconds. This quartet later became a quintet with the addition of Ján Bárta (Elkov - Kasper) who bridged up from the peloton. Their efforts were short-lived, however, and the race regrouped again on the second categorised climb.

Finally, the third breakaway attempt succeeded; once more it contained Garosio, his teammate Alessandro Tonelli (Bardiani - CSF - Faizané), as well as Roger Adriá (Equipo Kern Pharma), Matěj Zahálka (Elkov - Kasper) and Tomasz Budzinski (Mazowsze Serci Poland). 

Garosio took maximum mountain points on the day’s third categorised climb, and though he was beaten by Adriá at the next two opportunities, his lead over second-placed Adriá in the mountains competition reached a healthy 18 points. 

The breakaway’s lead was less robust and never exceeded three minutes. Indeed, by the time the escapees had passed through the second of the day’s three intermediate sprints, their advantage had dropped to well under two minutes. 

Following this intermediate sprint, Adriá and Zahálka attacked and dropped their breakaway companions. Zahálka then dropped Adriá and continued solo 35 kilometres from the finish. Deceuninck-Quickstep, in accordance with their position as the strongest team in the race, led the chase behind and swept up the breakaway riders who had been left behind by Zahálka.

With only one rider remaining out front, bonus seconds were available for those in the peloton at the last intermediate sprint of the day. Foreshadowing his later collection of bonus seconds at the finish line, Sagan won this sprint, amassing two bonus seconds while Hodeg scooped up the remaining one second. 

The resulting acceleration hastened Zahálka’s demise and he was caught 20 kilometres from the finish as the peloton prepared for another bunch sprint. Though the pace remained high enough to deter attacks, team after team fought Deceuninck-Quickstep for control of the race and, like an amoeba, the peloton spread across the road, occupying its full width as a drag race ensued on the approach to the finishing town.

After the final hairpin was negotiated cautiously due to the wet roads, Jannik Steimle (Deceuninck-Quickstep) opened up the sprint 300m from the line. Hodeg, however, had become detached from Deceuninck’s lead-out and sprinted up the left hand side of the road, close to the barriers. Halvorsen squeezed through this gap left by Hodeg next to the barriers, while in the middle of the road Sagan and Groves launched their own sprints, but Halvorsen proved too strong and was victorious in a photo finish.