Peter Schulting (Diftar) claimed a surprise victory on stage 3 of the ZLM Tour after the day’s early break narrowly held off the return of the peloton in a breathless finale in Buchten.
A day after Schulting’s teammate Guillaume Visser was caught in the final kilometre, Schulting made amends for Diftar with a pitch-perfect effort. He opened his sprint from distance to beat breakaway companions Martijn Rasenberg (Parkhotel Valkenburg) and Wessel Mouris (Metec – Solarwatt p/b Mantel), with the peloton falling just short of catching them.
Schulting and company spent more than 170km off the front of the peloton, building a maximum lead of three minutes or so. Although the flat terrain clearly lent itself to a bunch sprint, the trio began to believe in their prospects when they still had a lead of 1:30 as they approached the final 10km of the stage, with a tailwind at their backs to boot.
They still had 40 seconds in hand with 5km to go, which prompted an injection of pace from the dsm-firmenich PostNL team of Thursday’s winner Casper van Uden. Their acceleration looked to have steadied the ship, and when Alpecin-Deceuninck took up the reins with a little over 2km remaining, the break appeared to be doomed.
The twists and turns on the run-in, however, gave the break a fighting chance as they came beneath the flamme rouge clutching a ten-second buffer. When Alpecin-Deceuninck’s pursuit became disjointed in the final kilometre, the balance suddenly swung back into the favour of the escapees.
Schulting smartly tucked himself in third position as they entered the finishing straight before he delivered a powerful sprint to claim the stage honours. Van Uden was the quickest of the peloton, but he had to settle for fourth place behind the escapees.
“There is a good field here,” Schulting said. “I’m the oldest one here, I work four days a week, I have three kids. I have a normal life, so to beat the pros here makes me very proud.”
Rune Herregodts (Intermarché-Wanty) finished safely in the peloton to retain the yellow jersey, with Gleb Syritsa (Astana-Qazaqstan) now second overall at 12 seconds after Tim van Dijke (Visma-Lease a Bike) was forced to abandon following a crash early on Friday’s stage.
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