19/04/2023

Lennard Kämna takes victory on Queen stage of the Tour of the Alps as Geoghegan Hart maintains race lead

After a long, mountainous day that would have been well suited to a Grand Tour, Lennard Kämna claimed a brilliant victory on stage 3 of the Tour of the Alps as Tao Geoghegan Hart kept his race lead.

Stage 3 was the high mountain day. After a decent start, it then saw the riders climb Lago di Cei, 9.6 kilometres at 7.6% although it features much tougher gradients throughout, and then the final summit finish at the climb to San Valentino of 15.2 kilometres at 7.6%. Trying their luck in the early breakaway was 12-man group including Joe Dombrowski (Astana Qazaqstan Team), Jasha Sütterlin (Bahrain - Victorious) and Lukas Pöstlberger (Team Jayco AlUla)

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As the race reached the final climb of the day, it was Andrea Vendrame of the AG2R Citroën Team who was the sole leader, nearly three minutes ahead of the peloton, with the remaining breakaway riders scattered in between.

Back down the road in the peloton, EF Education-EasyPost, BORA - hansgrohe and the Movistar Team were sharing the efforts as they tried to reel in the lead riders.

Up ahead meanwhile Vendrame was joined by Joe Dombrowski for a short while before the American decided to go it alone, dropping Vendrame and riding clear on his lonesome.

Dombrowski, who was looking for his first win since taking a stage on the Giro d'Italia in 2021, was riding clear of Vendrame and all the remaining breakaway rider but a BORA - hansgrohe led peloton was closing the gap.

With Patrick Konrad having done an immense effort for Bora on the front of the peloton his pulled to the side and instead of Lennard Kamna carrying on at the front of the peloton, he decided to attack and force the other teams to chase him down.

With Kamna quickly gaining an advantage over the peloton Jefferson Alexander Cepeda joined him. INEOS Grenadiers took to the front of the peloton looking to manage the time gaps and keep Tao Geoghegan Hart in the race lead.

With 3.2km to go Kamna and Cepeda joined Dombrowski at the front of the race although sadly for the Astana man he couldn't match the tempo set by Cepeda for long.

With 1.8km to go race leader Geoghegan Hart decided to take matters into his own hands and upped the tempo, immediately catching Dombrowski with only Jack Haig, Hugh Carthy, Aleksandr Vlasov and Lorenzo Fortunato keeping his wheel.

With 500m to go and Geoghegan Hart catching, Kamna made his move and attacked Cepeda, riding clear and taking the stage win. Behind Vlasov took second for a Bora one-two with Cepeda holding on for third. Geoghegan Hart though had done enough to keep the lead for another day.