Mancebo wins atop Mont Mégantic at Tour de Beauce

Former Tour de Beauce winner, Francisco Mancebo (5Hour Energy-Kenda) won Stage 3 atop Mont Mégantic on Thursday. The Spaniard was the quickest to reach the top of the 5-km ascent five seconds ahead of Matthew Cooke (Century Road Club Association) and seven seconds ahead of Carter Jones (Bissell).

Mancebo is now leading the overall classification heading into the Stage 4 time trial.

The Tour de Beauce Stage 3 was considered the “queen” stage because of its undulating 164-km route that ends on a steep climb. In addition, there were two intermediate sprints and three king of the mountain ascents to contest.

Guillaume Boivin (Team Canada) stated the day in the leader’s jersey after winning the Stage 2 bunch sprint. His teammates set a strong pace at the front of the field during the opening kilometres of the race.

A significant gap formed for six riders halfway through the stage. The breakaway included Marsh Cooper (Team Canada), Javier Megias Leal (Novo Nordisk), Marc De Maar (UnitedHealthcare), Jeremy Vennell (Bissell), James Driscoll (Jamis-Hagens Berman) and Kirk Carlsen (H&R Block).

The breakaway gained just more than one minute ahead of the chasing field. Megias, however, made a daring solo attack on his breakaway companions. He held a one-minute lead and the others were reabsorbed into the main field.

Riders Jason McCartney (Bissell) and Rob Britton (Team Canada) bridged across to Megias and the trio increased their lead to more than three minutes. Several more riders attempted to bridge that gap from the main field. One notable chaser was Canada’s Bruno Langlois (Garneau-Quebec), who won Stage 6 last year. He was joined by Gregor Gazvoda (Champion System). Their efforts did not last long and the peloton caught them before the second king of the mountain ascent.

The time gap between the three-rider breakaway and the field fell to 30 seconds as the race approached the base of Mont Mégantic. It was finally caught just before the base of the climb.

The Tour de Beauce will continue with the Stage four 20-km time trial in St-Benoit-Labre.

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