Tour de la Provence: Bryan Coquard wins stage 3

The Cofidis rider Bryan Coquard has net his second win of the season with another impressive sprint to take the win in Manosque.

The day's breakaway saw Kevin Besson (Nice Métropole Côte d'Azur), Evaldas Šiškevičius (Go Sport - Roubaix Lille Métropole), Tony Hurel (St Michel - Auber93), Paul Ourselin (TotalEnergies) and Alexis Gougeard (B&B Hotels-KTM). The latter was a threat for the stage with the form he's shown for the last few weeks, with the breakaway gap never reaching more than 4:30 minutes it didn't initially seem there was much danger in the peloton but as Geougeard attacked in the main climb of the day, and later went solo, the peloton struggled to catch him.

Cofidis pushed the pace hard in the stage's longest climb so as to drop the majority of the sprinters which has indeed happened. The team kept the pace high after the summit so as to cut the Frenchman's gap with the help of Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl Team.

Only on the base of the final climb was Gougeard caught, Deceuninck kept the pace up even when Cofidis' Pierre-Luc Périchon sneaked off the front with around 1.5Km to go.

Pierre Latour launched the sprint first from behind and Coquard immeditately followed him, in the last 150 meters the French sprinter hit the front and kept an incredibly sharp sprint all the way to the line withstanding Julian Alaphilippe's chase, with race leader Filippo Ganna holding off to finish third and keeping the lead of the race.