Michael Albasini wins third stage and also takes overall lead in 2011 Bayern-Rundfahrt: Cycling News
HTC-Highroad team’s Michael Albasini won the third stage and also took the overall leader’s jersey in 2011 Bayern-Rundfahrt on Friday, May 27.
The race started in Bad Gogging and ended at Aichach. The 30-year-old, Michael took lead of eight-man group and covered the distance of 180.8 kilometres in 4 hours, 28 minutes and 1 second.
After winning the stage, Albasini told the media, "There was a big split about half way through the stage and forty riders got ahead, but there were a lot of guys in the break not working, so I was sure it was going to split again, and it did,"
The eighth riders crossed the finish-line with the same timing of Michael. Geraint Thomas of the Sky Procycling team and Wesley Sulzberger of FDJ team were in second and third place.
Thibaut Pinot was in ninth place with a difference of three seconds while the winner of second stage, Edvald Boasson Hagen was in 33th place in the stage.
In the few last kilometres, the two riders, Tony Hurel of Europcar and Pieter Serry of Topsport Vlaanderen, got away and they took advantage of five minutes over peloton.
Pieter Serry was in good form and who grabbed the only KOM of the day, ahead of Tony Hurel and Fabian Wegmann.
After few kilometres, Serry was caught by the peloton and the new troop was formed, which included Nicki Sorensen, Geraint Thomas, Adriano Malori, Johannes Frohlinger, Biel Kadri, Pieter Serry, Michael Albasini, Wesley Sulzberger, Andreas Klier and Dirk Muller.
All of them worked jointly in the final few kilometres, but Michael had good legs and with the help of his HTC-Highroad teams he crossed the finish-line first ahead of other cyclists.
Michael said, "I tried to go again to get some more of an advantage over the rest, and when that didn't work, I had enough energy left to win the sprint and get the lead."
Recently, Michael won Mountains Competition of Tour of the Basque Country and also grabbed fourth place in Tour of Oman.
Michael Albasini also took lead in overall classification with timings of 14 hours, 58 minutes and 17 seconds. Geraint Thomas was runner-up with 7 seconds behind Michael and Wesley Sulzberger finished third.
The next stage will start and end in Friedberg and all the riders will cover a distance of 26 kilometres Time Trial.
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