The third stage of the Vuelta Burgos was ridden over a 175 km long flat course that should have been quite straight forward but was hampered throughout by strong wind.
The course was around Burgo’s, the province’s capital city, also known as the town this event is named after. Nikolas Maes (Topsport Vlaanderen – Mercator) won the stage, Alexei Markov (Katusha) placed second and Ben Hermanns (Topsport Vlaanderen – Mercator) finished third. Best result today for Cerv?lo TestTeam was Serge Pauwels in 37th position.
"Today was a difficult race. Not because of the profile, it was flat – but because of the wind," explained Alex Sans Vega, Sports Director. "There was a strong wind on the entire course. We were prepared, but the peloton was nervous and as expected, split into three groups with about 60 km to go. Our team was present in the first group, but unfortunately the peloton came together again and we had a bunch sprint. Two kilometres ahead of the finish, there was a bigger crash and some of the riders had to stop and consequently lost some time. Currently I am not sure what the jury is doing – if they give them all the same time or only to the riders who crashed. While there was no one from Cerv?lo in the crash, we did have some riders behind the crash, so we will have to wait and see."
Tomorrows individual time trial, a 15km route around Roa could well shake up the leaderboard.
Stage 3 Results:
1st Nikolas Maes 4:25:55 39.49 km/h
2nd Alexei Markov
3rd Ben Hermans
4th Koldo Fern?ndez
5th Denis Galimzyanov
General Classification after Stage 3:
1st Ben Hermans 11:13:01 41.99 km/h
2nd Joaqu?n Rodr?guez Oliver +0.03
3rd Alejandro Valverde +0.04