Taco van der Hoorn launched a late break to burst free of his fellow escapees and win Wednesday’s third stage of the Binck Bank Tour in Antwerp.
The Dutch rider hit the accelerator a kilometre from the end of the 174.9km ride from Aalter to distance Maxime Vantomme, Sean De Bie and Matej Mohoric.
Mohoric took over the leader’s jersey from Stefan Kung, who was the victor in Tuesday’s time trial.
“We had a very good group. Mohoric was fucking strong. We had a perfect plan. We went really easy all day, long turns – two minutes from everyone,” Van der Hoorn said.
“Then, with 70km to go, we started to go pretty fast. In the last hour and a half everyone was doing long turns, one minute, and we made it. We had a really good plan and everyone stuck to it, and we made it. It was amazing.”
The seven-day race, won last year by 2017 Giro d’Italia and world time trial champion Tom Dumoulin, concludes on Sunday.
Binck Bank Tour 2018 – stage 3 results (Aalter – Antwerpen):
| 1 | Taco van der Hoorn (Roompot-Nederlandse Loterij) | 3:47:42 |
| 2 | Maxime Vantomme (WB Aqua Protect Veranclassic) | +03” |
| 3 | Sean De Bie (Veranda’s Willems Crelan) | ,, |
| 4 | Matej Mohoric (Bahrain-Merida) | ,, |
| 5 | Jesper Asselman (Roompot-Nederlandse Loterij) | +35” |
| 6 | Dylan Groenewegen (LottoNL-Jumbo) | +01’11” |
| 7 | Rüdiger Selig (Bora-hansgrohe) | ,, |
| 8 | Fabio Jakobsen (Quick-Step Floors) | ,, |
| 9 | Max Walscheid (Team Sunweb) | ,, |
| 10 | Tom Van Asbroeck (EF Education First-Drapac) | ,, |
General classification after stage 3:
| 1 | Matej Mohoric (Bahrain-Merida) | 8:03:45 |
| 2 | Sean De Bie (Veranda’s Willems Crelan) | +01” |
| 3 | Stefan Küng (BMC) | +19” |
| 4 | Maxime Vantomme (WB Aqua Protect Veranclassic) | +25” |
| 5 | Taco van der Hoorn (Roompot-Nederlandse Loterij) | +31” |
| 6 | Victor Campenaerts (Lotto Soudal) | +33” |
| 7 | Søren Kragh Andersen (Team Sunweb) | +34” |
| 8 | Michael Matthews (Team Sunweb) | ,, |
| 9 | Maximilian Schachmann (Quick-Step Floors) | +38” |
| 10 | Alex Dowsett (Katusha-Alpecin) | ,, |
