Mark Dowling (Leinster) today showed the kind of legs that carried him to outright victory at Rás Mumhan earlier in his career when he won the queen stage of the 2019 edition.
He broke clear on the cat 1 climb with Ben Healy of the Team Ireland; the duo remaining clear and driving hard all the way to the finish line in Waterville.
Behind them in a five-man group was stage 1 winner and race leader Alex Luhrs of Ribble Pro. However, he lost 45 seconds on the two leaders.
As a result Ben Healy took the yellow jersey from the shoulders of Luhrs. Healy had finished in the winning three-man breakaway on stage 1 with Luhrs and his Ribble team mate Daniel Bigham.
Today the time that Dowling and Healy gained saw Dowling placed 3rd overall after the stage.
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Healy, who is just 18-years-old, now leads the race by 43 seconds from Luhrs with just one stage remaining; the pressure now on the Irish team to keep Healy in that jersey and finish the job.
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Dowling is now at 1:36 in 3rd and Conor Hennebry is 4th at 2:25. Hennebry, the defending champion, was with yellow jersey Luhrs today and was chasing the two leaders when he jumped to gain some time.
However, while he rode well his gains were minimal; pulling out two seconds on the small group of four that Luhrs finished in.
Bigham keeps the climbers' classification jersey and Luhrs holds the points classification lead.
Cian May (Leinster) is leading the cat 2 classification and Healy holds the young rider classification lead.
You can view the full results from today's stage 3 embedded below for you to scroll down through or by clicking on the 'Download' button.
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