After a rocky season, Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek) found his best form on the queen stage 3 at the Tour of Luxembourg, he took his first victory since June and has taken over the race lead.
The third day of the race in Luxembourg was about the climbers and puncheurs from the rest of the field paring it down to riders capable of winning the overall classification into tomorrow’s time-trial. With 3000 meters of elevation it was a difficult day with plenty of attacks over a high pace over a steep ascent that saw a handful of riders in contention for the stage win - March Hirschi tried. The Dane have a very strong punch and managed to hold off Jordan Jegat to take the stage win, and jump into the overall lead as Romain Grégoire lost time. Jegat is 4 seconds off but it’s the 8 seconds to McNulty that everyone is concerned about before Saturday’s TT.
“It was difficult for everybody, everybody knows that if you attack early you have the motorbike and Marc was really good he was really strong, it was difficult to catch him back. Luckily Brandon (McNulty) started his spring early and I could overtake him in the last moment. It’s going to be difficult having the leader’s jersey TT suit is a big disadvantage but we’re going to do what we can and hopefully we can win the race.”
-Mattias Skjelmose
“Mentally, I was ready, I was motivated but as soon as I had to push a bit of power, I felt like my legs were stiff, and they weren’t responding at all. I couldn’t do anything; it was just a fight against myself.”
-Romain Grégoire. 25th place at 2:48”
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