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UAE Team Emirates powered to victory in the team time trial on stage three of Paris-Nice, as they took advantage of clement weather to claim the yellow jersey.
The team in white averaged 51.4km/h across the 26.9km course, and took the win by 15 seconds from Jayco AlUla and 20 seconds from EF Education-EasyPost in Auxerre.
As a result of their win, Brandon McNulty stepped into the yellow jersey after it was vacated by New Zealander Laurence Pithie (Groupama-FDJ).
Astana-Qazaqstan set an early benchmark with a time of 32:02, before they were swept away by UAE Team Emirates, who finished in 31:23. Jayco AlUla then came close, as did Ineos Grenadiers and EF Education-EasyPost, all within 30 seconds of UAE, but without making them move from the hot seats.
Rain moved on late on in the day, interrupting some team’s efforts at challenging UAE. Soudal Quick-Step were 17 seconds ahead of UAE at the intermediate timing point, but ended the stage 21 seconds down, while Bora-Hansgrohe were 14 seconds up at the halfway mark, but finished the day 54 seconds behind.
As a result, the general classification has been shaken up, with four UAE riders – McNulty, Finn Fisher-Black, João Almeida and Jay Vine in the top five, and pre-race favourites Remco Evenepoel (Soudal Quick-Step) and Primož Roglič (Bora-Hansgrohe) at 18 seconds and 54 seconds, respectively.
There is a lot of racing still to come – five more stages, in fact – so it is far from game over for Roglič, but it is still quite the deficit to come back from.
For UAE and their quartet of general classification hopefuls, they could hardly be in a better position ahead of bigger tests to come.
“I love this discipline, and we were a strong team coming into it, so we knew we had a good shot at the win,” Fisher-Black said, who was first across the line. “I’m not going to lie and say it [the weather] didn’t make a difference, we came just before the rain.
“The team wins a lot, but every win is cherished just as much as any other. There’s something special about winning a time trial because you win togheter, there’s not just one person crossing the line. Everything was perfect, we don’t think we could could have gone faster in any section.
“We thought before the start it would be good if I could do the sprint at the end… it was good.”
Asked if he thought he now had a chance of winning the whole race, the New Zealander said: “I think that’s still a dream, but it puts us in a very good position, we can look to fight the next few days. I don’t think it’s about defending yet, we can still do a lot of attacking.”
RESULTS: Paris-Nice stage three, Auxerre > Auxerre (26.9km), TTT
1. UAE Team Emirates, in 31:23
2. Jayco AlUla, +15s
3. EF Education-EasyPost, +20s
4. Soudal Quick-Step, +22s
5. Ineos Grenadiers, s.t.
6. Visma-Lease a Bike, +38s
7. Astana-Qazaqstan, +39s
8. Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale, +39s
9. Cofidis, s.t.
10. Bahrain-Victorious, +42s
General classification after stage three
1. Brandon McNulty (USA) UAE Team Emirates, in 8:48:53
2. Finn Fisher-Black (NZl) UAE Team Emirates
3. João Almeida (Por) UAE Team Emirates
4. Jay Vine (Aus) UAE Team Emirates, all at same time
5. Michael Matthews (Aus) Jayco AlUla, +15s
6. Chris Harper (Aus) Jayco AlUla
7. Luke Plapp (Aus) Jayco AlUla, all at same time
8. Remco Evenepoel (Bel) Soudal Quick-Step, +18s
9. Owain Doull (GBr) EF Education-EasyPost, +20s
10. Egan Bernal (Col) Ineos Grenadiers, s.t.
