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news
Peter Sagan wins Stage 3 of 2017 Tour de France.JPGTour de France Stage 3: Peter Sagan unclips 200 metres from line - and still wins
Peter Sagan of Bora Hansgrohe recovered from unclipping a couple of hundred metres from the line to win Stage 3 of the 2017 Tour de France on a day when the race headed from Belgium to Luxembourg via a brief detour into France. Team Sky’s Geraint Thomas retains the yellow jersey of race leader.
Today saw the first uphill finish of this year’s race with a short but punchy climb to the Côte des Religieuses at Longwy, and it produced a rousing finish many had predicted.
With the 1.6-kilometre climb averaging 5.2 per cent, it was a stage that suited a puncheur rather than a pure sprinter or a climber, and what’s more one that not only began in Philippe Gilbert’s home town, but also took place on his 35th birthday.
The Quick Step Floors rider did not figure in the finale, however, and after BMC Racing's Richie Porte had come to the front as the gradient of the final climb eased off coming under the flamme rouge, Sagan was sitting fourth and launched an attack that looked set to produce a convincing win for the world champion.
But inside the final 250 metres, one of the Slovak's feet unclipped from the pedal and it seemed that victory would elude him.
Sagan, however, had other ideas, clipping back in almost intsntaneously, regaining his momentum, and holding off Sunweb's Michael Matthews and Dan Martin of Quick Step Floors to take victory.
Unclips mid sprint - still wins. @petosagan
#TDF2017pic.twitter.com/UO0dQOyNoA— CyclingHub (@CyclingHubTV) July 3, 2017
Sprint incroyable de @petosagan, surpuissant pour s'imposer devant @blingmatthews / What a sprint from Sagan, so much power! #TDF2017 pic.twitter.com/FJGFOYWHnL
— Le Tour de France (@LeTour) July 3, 2017
Data from Sagan, Matthews and Porte clearly shows the impact of the moment the world champion unclipped and his susequent recovery.
Porte attacked first, but Sagan dominated the field with an ave speed of 28.6km/h on the final climb (1.6km, 5.8% grad.). #TDFdata #TDF2017 pic.twitter.com/VKlYAPEX8X
— letourdata (@letourdata) July 3, 2017
The yellow jersey of Thomas was in the group immediately behind, guaranteeing the Welshman at least another day in the race lead, while team made and defending champion Chris Froome moves up to second overall.
It took a while for the break to form today after the stage headed from Belgium towards Luxembourg, and when it did it was Adam Hansen of Lotto-Soudal – riding a record 18th Grand Tour in a row – who instigated the move.
He was joined by Direct Energie rider Romain Sicard, plus four Tour de France debautants – Cannondale-Drapac’s Nate Brown, Nils Politt of Katusha, Romain Hardy from the Fortuneo team, and Wanty Groupe Gobert’s Frederik Backaert.
As yesterday, the peloton kept the break on a tight leash, with the maximum lead seldom going beyond six minutes.
Once the break had negotiated the day’s intermediate sprint point, it was Dimension Data’s Mark Cavendish, looking to get back to full race fitness after his long lay-off through glandular fever. who got the better of the other sprinters to take seventh place.
Following the day’s second categorised climb Brown, who had taken the solitary point at the first one, jumped off the front of the break with Politt, the American taking maximum points at the third King of the Mountains summit to all but ensure himself of taking the polka dot jersey from team mate Taylor Phinney.
Heading towards the final 40 kilometres, a move by Lotto-Soudal’s Thomas De Gendt was followed by several other riders and doomed the break.
One of those riders was Direct Energie’s Lilian Calmejane, who launched a solo attack ahead of the 20-kilometres-to-go point, but he was slowly reeled in by the peloton and caught 10 kilometres ahead of the explosive finale.
Reaction
Stage winner Peter Sagan
What is pressure? I don't know what it is.
First of all, I want to thank the team for pulling all day. It was not easy with the headwind and a lot of stress in the peloton.
It was a pretty hard climb at the end. I saw a little gap with 800m to go. I decided to speed up. It was far away and too early.
When I started my sprint, my foot went out of the pedal. It was another mistake but I won. Michael Matthews almost beat me but I'm glad I stayed ahead of him.
Overall leader Geraint Thomas
It was obviously a stressful finale but the team did a good work to keep us up. At the start of the climb, Chris Froome was a little far, in about 20th position, so we had to make an effort to move up.
Richie Porte attacked strongly. I didn't expect that. I knew Sagan and other riders going for the stage victory would bring him back.
We said before the race that Richie was the main man. Our impression is reinforced by what he did today.
However, having the yellow jersey from the start of the Tour is a massive benefit for us. It gives us the freedom to ride at the front early but today we let the honour of pulling to other teams.
It's a long way to Paris with another 18 days to go but for me it's a dream scenario so far and it's good for the morale.
New mountains classification leader, Nate Brown
For sure the polka dot jersey is part of our plan. We went out with the goal yesterday to get the jersey and today we rode for keeping the jersey in the family.
I'm the happiest man I kept it. We intend to continue being super aggressive during the whole race. We have guys for the GC. We want to spice up the race.
Marcel Kittel, who kept the leadership of the points classification
I'm still very confident, my legs were okay today, in the end it was very difficult. But in general I feel really good.
For us, the goal will be again the victory tomorrow. I will be very focused.
The green jersey ambition can be developed after a few more stages and if I see if I can have realistic ambitions or not. For now, I'll keep defending it and fighting for it.
> Tour de France 2017 preview: Your stage-by-stage guide to cycling's biggest race
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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62 comments
If user feedback is useful to making the site better, then I would rather not have a spoiler in the story title.
I have just 'Unfollowed' and turned off notifications. See you in a month (if I remember to follow again). I'm sure your advertisers are happy with you at least.
Blimey. Is cycling the only sport you lot watch? You stay away from the news until you have watched the game/race/event. That's been the norm since then media started reporting! Like avoiding the Sunday newspapers until you'd watched MOTD recorded using a shitty Videoplus code that inevitably cut off the end of the game you really wanted to watch. Can't you sit on your hands until watching the highlights?!?
No, it's easier to change the way media reports the news than it is for these muppets to stay off the cycling news websites until they've watched an event at their leisure.
But wouldn't any news site try to attract viewers rather than do something guaranteed to make them stay away for most of the day? It just seems odd.
This really is a no-brainer. You just don't put spoilers in headlines. On-line journalism school week one.
Next.
Which is why every single news outlet worldwide, whatever the sport, does precisely that.
Online journalism school week one is actually headline SEO optimisation, but hey-ho
This is in no way shape or form a "news outlet."
This is in no way shape or form a "news outlet."
LOL - what world are you living in? EVERY news site puts the spoilers in the headline. Its how news works. They do it based on analysis of what readers want and what readers click on. That's online journalism 101.
Literally nobody would click on a headline labelled 'Day 3 results' . It sounds like the most boring and dull article in the world.
Next.
I'm a sniveller
I would not click on an article titled 'Stage 3 results' or whatever. Thats dull as dishwater and the only people that clicked on it would be....well...nobody.
But if I saw Sagan won after unclipping then I'd click on it as its interesting.
That's how news works in 2017 gentlemen, I can't believe people are whinging about a cycling news site showing results from a cycling race - if they didn't write enticing headlines this site may as well not report on any news - it would be a joke site that reviewed products. BORING.
The thing is this isn't a site dedicated to racing, it only really covers the big stuff, so people visit for a fair mix of stuff. Sometimes people just go into robot mode and put it on just to see if there's a riveting pass of the day or a review of a chainlubing device. The easiest solution is just to put TDF stage 3 result of whatever, not an utterly explicit description of the stage as the header.
Surely we've got enough web skills to put a picture that changes when you actually put the mouse over it to stop spoilers. At least that way you only get the result pic if you drag over it.
Seems silly of road.cc to put people off their site between 5pm and 9pm through not wanting to not spoil the result for their readers.
Who are road.cc's customers? The advertisers? What do they think at probably the most hyped time of the year, encouraging people not to view their adverts?
the it comes up every year comment, so it's obviously a reoccurring problem which people feel the need to keep raising?
Can't believe some of the snivelling on here.
Given that your site appeals to cycling fans who more than likely will want to watch the Tour, you are going to annoy most of them by headlines like that. You wouldn't expect a film website back in the day to say for example 'The Empire Strikes back is a really great. I especially liked the revelation that Darth Vader is Luke's father!' You must know that you are spoiling it for a large chunk of your readership but you still do it! Are you seriously suggesting we should avoid the site until after 8pm?
As was stated above you could have a headline that doesn't ruin it. As for saying your a news site, what sort of answer is that? Your not exactly breaking the Watergate scandal are you. We are not missing a great scoop that no-one else has.
See you in 3 weeks!
Nerd.
THANKS FOR THE SPOILER!!!!!!!!
Regarding reporting of results. This comes up every year at the start of the season, and again during the Tour de France.
We are a news site (among other things).
The rest of the specialist and mainstream media reporting on the race headline their articles in a similar way.
While we sympathise with people trying to avoid the result, as others have said the only way to ensure that is to stay off news sites (and social media channels, for that matter) until you have watched it.
Sorry Simon, but that is a bit of a cop out.
Having a title such as "Drama in the final 200m of stage 3 of the TdF - Results and analysis" is not going to hurt your page views one bit.
Those who want results etc can click and know that they're going to the right page. Those who don't, can stay away without having anything spoiled.
Having the result ruined for me via liking your page on FB is only going to cause me to unfollow and then just visit your site if I remember and feel like it.
Are you seriously suggesting that the BBC refrain from reporting on a football game until Match of the Day has been aired? FFS...
On the news before MoTD they certainly used to use the "look away now" technique as they put the results up, and didn't read them out. So perhaps not your best example.
...snivelled rjfrussell.
hmm, you could make an episode of a sitcom out of something like that. two likely lads in the north east, trying to avoid a football score all day before watching highlights on Match of the Day...what do you reckon ?
Boo this man.
I was on catchup, 20km behind. And decided to check something.
I'm bloody kicking myself - should've known better.
Simples, just put "Tour de France Stage 3 result" no issues with spoilers
Or don't read this until you have watched the highlights perhaps
"Tour de France Stage 3: Peter Sagan unclips 200 metres from line - and still wins" doesn't leave much unsaid on the front page, does it. Even the cycling forum on UKClimbing has a thread that's called 'TdF (Spoiler alert)' so as to hide the day's outcome and not to cause this sort of upset.
hence don't read anything on social media until you watched.
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