Toms Skujins (Trek-Segafredo) was in a breakaway at the Tour of California a year ago when he crashed heavily on the descent, then woozily tried to remount his bike despite what turned out to be a concussion. His breakaway had a better ending Tuesday.
The Latvian rider jumped into the leading group on the Cachagua Road Summit, then crested the final climb at Laguna Seca Raceway, pulling away from breakaway companion Sean Bennett of Hagens Berman Axeon to win his third career Tour of California stage.
Bennett finished three seconds back, and Caleb Ewan won a bunch sprint from a hard-charging peloton to round out the podium, another five seconds adrift.
”Last year, obviously, didn’t pan out as I wanted it to,” Skujins said with a chuckle. ”Today was definitely a hard one. Never is an easy one. The breakaway was super strong and obviously played into our advantage. It whittled down the field pretty quick. At the end there were very few people.”
Egan Bernal (Team Sky) finished safely in the peloton to maintain his overall lead heading into Wednesday’s time trial. But with just 40 seconds on Antwan Tolhoek and several other contenders within striking distance, Bernal could have a tough time keeping the leader’s jersey.
”A long day with the wind. It was hard. And the final part was so fast,” Bernal said. ”I think the Team Sky guys did a really good job. They tried to control the final part for us. The most important was to keep the GC jersey and save some energy for tomorrow. I hope to do a good time trial.”
Tour of California 2018 – stage 3 results (King City – Laguna Seca):
| 1 | Toms Skujins (Trek-Segafredo) | 4:52:47 |
| 2 | Sean Bennett (Hagens Berman Axeon) | +03” |
| 3 | Caleb Ewan (Mitchelton-Scott) | +08” |
| 4 | Peter Sagan (Bora-hansgrohe) | ,, |
| 5 | Egan Bernal (Team Sky) | ,, |
| 6 | Adam Yates (Mitchelton-Scott) | ,, |
| 7 | Alex Howes (EF Education First-Drapac) | ,, |
| 8 | Tom-Jelte Slagter (Dimension Data) | ,, |
| 9 | Brent Bookwalter (BMC) | ,, |
| 10 | William Barta (Hagens Berman Axeon) | ,, |
General classification after stage 3:
| 1 | Egan Bernal (Team Sky) | 12:09:08 |
| 2 | Rafal Majka (Bora-hansgrohe) | +25” |
| 3 | Adam Yates (Mitchelton-Scott) | +31” |
| 4 | Antwan Tolhoek (LottoNL-Jumbo) | +40” |
| 5 | Daniel Martinez (EF Education First-Drapac) | ,, |
| 6 | Kristijan Durasek (UAE Team Emirates) | ,, |
| 7 | Mathias Frank (AG2R La Mondiale) | +50” |
| 8 | Tejay van Garderen (BMC) | +01’00” |
| 9 | Ruben Guerreiro (Trek-Segafredo) | +01’11” |
| 10 | Laurens De Plus (Quick-Step Floors) | +01’14” |
