Tinkoff Saxo’s Matti Breschel has won the third stage of the 25th Post Danmark Rundt (Tour Of Denmark).
With Lars Boom of Astana in the race lead by nine seconds from Lars Bak, stage three saw a 185km stage which started and finished in Vejle with three 5.6km laps to finish off.
Jimmy Engoulvent of Europcar, Clausen (Trefor blue Water ),Chris Williams (TNN), Jaques Van Rensburg(MTN), Mike Terpstra (ROP) and Grøn (VPC) were quickly into a break and with Clausen taking the first hill sprint, this group were 5.30 ahead after 85 kilometres on a sunny day.
Patrick Clausen took the second climb with 66kms left and a lead of 3.37 whilst back down the road, Julien Morice of Europcar took a tumble and ended in a grassy verge.
In a crosswind, witn 46,8kms to go, Team Sky’s Lars Petter Nordhaug and Alex Peters and Jacob Fuglsang of Astanta crashed on an urban road which had a number of chicanes.
Nordhaug was out of the race but Fuglsang still dripping with blood continued as the gap came down to 1.11.
As the gap dropped to 46 seconds seconds, the oldest man in the break – Jimmy Engoulvent went for a break on his own.
Tino-Saxo had led the challenge to bring them back and Mike Terpstra went away on the climb and took the points before he was joined by Van Rensburg, who were sixteen seconds ahead of the Tinkoff-Saxo led peloton.
Terpstra and Van Rensburg knew their time was up and after a handshake, the peloton sped past them.
Siutsou of Team Sky, Jay McCarthy of Tinkoff Saxo and Van Rensburg broke clear but just before a cobbled section, Siutsou went flying over his handlebars, leaving the other two to plough on.
McCarthy and Van Rensburg led going into Vejle but with eighteen kilometres to go, they were joined by the peloton who were lining themselves up for the bonus sprint.
Tinkoff Saxo had riders on the front on the climb which had a ramp of 20% and it was Chris Juul Jensen who took the three seconds before he was part of a nine man break, that stayed away for two laps before the attacks started on the final lap.
With 2.9kms left, Troels Vinther of Cult Energy put in a dig that allowed him to get some daylight from the rest of the group.
Vinther was caught 1200 metres later and Alexander Kamp took over on the climb. With no sign of the group behind him, Kamp went for it.
He was caught on the steepest part of the climb and it was Tinkoff Saxo’s Matti Breschel took the win in 4.36.35 ahead of Guldhammer, Kamp and Bak
”It was really hard. I was just following and said I am not going to do that too many times, ” said Breschel. ”With four riders in the GC, I decided to give them a bit of play. Chris told me I should go and I did and it worked.
”it is really, really nice to win here today.”
Lars Bak is the new race leader.