Alejandro Valverde of Movistar powered past his opponents in an uphill sprint to win Stage Three of the 2012 Paris-Nice cycling race. Movistar had obviously planned to set up Valverde all along; they organized the chase of the three-man break and pushed the pace all the way to the final uphill section of the stage, where Valverde came from fourth wheel to run down Rabobank’s Luis-Leon Sanchez.
Gianni Meersman of Lotto-Belisol made a good sprint to take third, but the most amazing ride of the day came from Australian champion Simon Gerrans. Gerrans was at least a dozen riders back with 200 meters to go when the GreenEdge rider put in a tremendous burst of speed, coming within a foot of catching Valverde at the line.
“I’m thrilled, it’s a very important victory,” Valverde said to cyclingnews.com after the race.. “I have to thank the team again because they have done a phenomenal job and I was able to finish it off. This victory was for them because they deserve it.”
Sky’s Bradley Wiggins comfortably retained the yellow jersey; none of the General Classification leaders had any difficulties.
The 194-km (121 mile) was flat for almost the entire length, with a couple of gentle climbs at the end. The climbs made it unsuited to pure sprinters, and perfectly suited to power riders like Thor Hushovd, Tom Boonen, or Alejandro Valverde. Hushovd, however, was hurting all day—the former world champion is not back on form yet—and Boonen, though he pulled hard at the front for a while near the end, didn’t contest the final sprint, perhaps saving energy to shepherd Levi Leipheimer later in the race.
A trio of riders—Michael Morkov (Saxo Bank), Jimmy Engoulvent (Saur-Sojasun) and Roy Curvers (Project 1t4i)—attacked at the start, opening a gap as great as 4:30, but the flat course didn’t offer them any help. The peloton, mostly driven by Movistar, slowly reeled in the break until 25 km to go, when the team got serious and turned on the speed.
The gap was down to 25 seconds when Jimmy Engoulvent decided to strike out on his own. His mates didn’t last, and ultimately neither did he—six km from the finish the peloton swallowed him up.
