Young Australian sprinter Kaden Groves came close to a stage win at the Tour de Hongrie today, picking up another second-place finish, which subsequently catapulted him into the overall race lead after gaining bonus seconds on the line.
The 21-year-old will ride in the yellow leader’s jersey tomorrow for Mitchelton-SCOTT with a small two second buffer over second place Jon Aberasturi (Caja-Rural).
Five fight on
The stage began like previous days with a breakaway group jumping away early on. The group of five riders settled into their rhythm and were quick to open up a gap of over six minutes, with the peloton in no hurry to bring them back on the lengthy 182km stage.
The catch
Coming into the final 25km the peloton upped the chase as the sprint teams began getting ready for the finish, and the gap dropped to just one minute.
As the finish drew closer, four of the five leaders were swallowed up with one rider from Jumbo-Visma not willing to give up just yet.
Eventually, with just over five kilometres to go, the peloton was all back together again and teams fought to take control ahead of the bunch sprint.
Dash to the line
Mitchelton-SCOTT worked to keep Groves in a good position with Alex Edmondson and Luke Durbridge setting a hard tempo into the final kilometre. Trek-Segafredo then took over into the last 800metres with Groves surfing the wheels before opening up his sprint.
As the sprint began, Groves came fast on the left-hand side but was denied the victory by Jakub Mareczko (CCC Team) who launched a fraction of a second earlier.
Kaden Groves
“Second again, I know I’ve said it before, but the boys did a really good job. It is nice to be in yellow, but I think it will be a hard day for us tomorrow, with other teams expecting us to ride.
“We had a small mistake today, I think we maybe went a little too long, but it was quite stressful today so the guys all did a really good job.
“The run in was pretty hard, I started the sprint on Mareczko’s wheel and when he kicked on the left, I went at the same time and realised I should have gone earlier and got the jump on him.
“We will see how it goes tomorrow it is the last possible sprint chance.”
Dave McPartland – Sport director
“We were going for the stage win today, it is still a work in process, but we are certainly getting closer and closer.
“Kaden was coming at Mareczko in the finish, so maybe he could have gone slightly earlier as he ran out of road but that’s the small details. He did everything he could and so did the whole team in the lead-out. We pretty much nailed it, the guys dropped him off where they needed to and everybody contributed to that well.
“We were hoping for the stage win so to be in the leader’s jersey can feel like a bit of a consolation prize, but of course it is still always great to be leading a race and shows how consistent Kaden has been in the sprints.”
2020 Tour de Hongrie Results – Stage 3:
1. Jakub Mareczko (CCC Team) 3:48:33
2. Kaden Groves (Mitchelton-SCOTT) ST
3. Eriend Blikra (UnoX) ST
General Classification after stage 3:
1. Kaden Groves (Mitchelton-SCOTT) 10:14:45
2. Jon Aberasturi (Caja-Rural) +0:02
3. Lennard Hofstede (Team Jumbo-Visma) +0:03
