AUSTRALIAN MICHAEL MATTHEWS claimed victory in the third stage of the Tour of Spain and the overall race lead as he prevailed in a sprint finish ahead of Ireland’s Dan Martin and Spaniard Joaquim Rodriguez today.
The Orica GreenEdge rider crossed the line just ahead of Martin in a time of 5hr 12min 14sec to take the 197.8km stage from Cadiz to Arcos de la Frontera.
The 10 bonus seconds on offer to winners of a stage allowed Matthews to move ahead of race favourite Colombian Nairo Quintana into the overall lead by four seconds.
Overnight leader Alejandro Valverde came home seven seconds down on the stage leaders to fall back into third place overall.
However, two-time winner Alberto Contador and Chris Froome showed no ill effects on their return from the injuries that forced them to retire from the Tour de France as they finished among the leading pack to remain in contention.
Saxo-Tinkoff’s Contador trails Quintana by 19 seconds with Sky’s Froome a further eight seconds back.
On the first stage of the race involving any serious climbing, an early breakaway group consisting of the Swiss duo Danilo Wyss and Jonathan Fumeaux, Spain’s Lluis Mas Bonet, Jerome Cousin of France and South African Jacques Van Rensburg built up an early eight minute lead.
That was whittled down to five minutes before the first of four category three climbs, though, and despite an attempt to breakaway on his own by Bonet, he was swallowed up by the peloton with just under 30km to go.
There was then a scare for Froome as two Movistar riders Jonathan Castroviejo and Adriano Malori crashed centimetres away from the 2013 Tour de France champion, but thankfully both avoided a collision with anymore riders and were fine to complete the stage after a brief delay.
After the peloton briefly bunched together, there were then a number of attacks on the slight climb to the line and Garmin Sharp’s Martin looked like he would reel in Matthews but just left himself too much to do as the Australian added to his two stage wins in last year’s Tour of Spain.
Watch today’s finish below:
