Michael O'Loughlin got up the road early and often and the Irish U23 TT champion put in the ride of the season so far.
Having endured a very difficult first half of the season with illness and injury, Ireland's Michael O'Loughlin is back with a bang.
The Team Wiggins man holds three classification leaders' jerseys after today's third stage of the Tour Alsace in France.
He leads the climbers' classification, the 70km competition and the combativity classification. And he earned all three with some very impressive aggression today.
Matt Teggart, who was in the breakaway and finished 2nd yesterday, climbed well today. And remains very much in the general classification hunt.
With the riders facing 143km from Vesoul to La Planche des Belles Filles, it was soon clear O’Loughlin was in aggressive form.
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He got up the road very early with Louis Louvet (SCO Dijon-Team Materiel). They’d pull out a gap of some 20 seconds but after about 10km there were reeled in.
There followed a series of counter attacks and when a promising-looking group of four broke clear, O’Loughlin was again present.
He was with Filip Maciejuk (Leopard Pro Cycling), Matthew Bostock (Great Britain) and Jonas Rutsch (Germany).
Michael O'Loughlin, third from left, in the climbers' jersey. Teggart, second from right, gets to wear one of O'Loughlin's other jerseys having himself been on the attack in this race.
O’Loughlin was 3rd at the first intermediate sprint and with 40km complete the breakaway had 1:50. That increased to three minutes with 90km still to race, and soon went out to 3:30.
O’Loughlin would then win the second intermediate sprint and was first over the top of the first climb at 82km. remaining
By the second climb, with 62km still to race, the gap between breakaway and bunch had begun to fall.
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O’Loughlin would take the second climb and a further 12km down the road, with 50km remaining, the escape’s advantage was down to 1:40.
However, despite the Swiss national team hitting the front to lead the chase in the peloton, the gap went back up over two minutes.
And when the escape hit the third climb of the day, O’Loughlin made it a hat trick. As the breakaway passed the 30km point, the gap was back down again; to just below one minute.
In the peloton, not everyone was convinced the escape would be caught and two chasers bridged across to them; Paul Sauvage (CC Etupes) and Davide Orrico (Team Vorarlberg-Santic) .
With 12km remaining, Orrico took the final climb, with O’Loughlin in 2nd place.
And while the Irish rider was one of the last men standing in the escape, he was caught as the peloton was led by SEG Racing into the final 10km.
The race then went up the Planche des Belles Filles, which has played host to the Tour de France.
Yellow jersey David van de Poel, who denied Matt Teggart (Team Wiggins) a stage win on Thursday, was distanced when the road kicked up.
Geoffrey Bouchard, the 26-year-old Frenchman who has just secured a trial with AG2R La Mondiale, attacked and won solo for Cr4C Roanne.
He claimed victory by 31 seconds from Marc Hirschi (Development Team Sunweb). Rounding out the podium, a further eight seconds back, was Brandon McNulty riding from the United States.
Teggart was 25th, at 2:13 as the race split to pieces. After his heroics earlier, O’Loughlin was 112th at 11:59.
However, he leads the three classifications; the climbers’ competition the most significant. He has 28 points to the 15 points of the stage winner.
Florian Stork (Development Team Sunweb), who was 15th today and was in the escape yesterday, has taken the race lead. Teggart is 12th overall, at 1:10 with two stages remaining.
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