Edward Theuns of Topsport has taken victory on stage three of the 75th Tour de l'Eurométropole race in Belgium.
Nine leaders finally went clear after a hunded kilometres of a 174km stage from Blankenberge to Nieuwport and stayed away until they were pulled back before the end and Theuns took the sprint in a time of 3.44.22 ahead of Cofidis' Michael Van Staeyen, Louis Verhelst, who was third for the second stage running and Tom Van Asbroeck of LottoNL-Jumbo who said to his team's website: “The chaos of the bunch sprint stopped me from winning today.
“You have to be a bit lucky sometimes, and I wasn’t today. There wasn’t enough space. Everything went quite well until the last 300 metres. On the right side and on the left side, there was someone ahead of me. That forced me to slow down for a few seconds. I wasn’t able to push through.”
Going into the final stage, Alexis Gougeard of AG2R continues to lead the race by three seconds from LottoNL-Jumbo's Martin Keizer.