After narrowly missing out to
Kaden Groves in the finale of stage 2, this time around Van Aert was able to get the best of his Australian sprint rival. Whilst the day before, Groves took Van Aert's wheel, this time around the roles were reversed. "It was my goal to do the opposite," the Belgian explains. "I wanted to use my power and I think I surprised him by going even before 200m. It was slightly uphill but with a lot of speed so the perfect sprint for me."
"My confidence was quite good. Yesterday I felt good on the stage and today again even though it was even warmer. The team was so strong and we had the whole race in control and they dropped me in the perfect position in the end, so yeah, this gave me the confidence to finish it off," he concludes his assessment. "Unfortunately, the fun is over now. Tomorrow I will be happy to give the role of leader of the team to
Sepp Kuss and
Cian Uijtdebroeks. There is a super hard climb and that will be the first test for the GC guys and for me it will be really hard to keep the jersey so I'll try to enjoy it one more time."