The Three Days of De Panne: Stage Three

Stage three of the Three Days of De Panne was divided into two parts, with a road race in the morning and a time trial in the afternoon. In the first part of the stage, despite the best efforts of a group of breakaway riders that included Russell Downing, Mike Terpstra, Tim De Troyer, Niko Eeckhout and Thomas Vanhaecke, there was never any doubt that the riders would be brought back and that the stage would end in a sprint. Although there were a number of other riders who tried to get away, in the end the winner was the fastest man on the day, as the sprinters had an opportunity to go for it. It was Alexander Kristoff who took the honours, ahead of Sacha Modolo and Elia Viviani. This put Kristoff into the leader's jersey ahead of Arnaud Demare.

The second part of the stage was a 14.75 km time trial which would ultimately decide the winner of the Three Days of De Panne. All eyes were on last year's winner, Sylvain Chavanel, who is a strong time trialist and is, in fact, the French time trial champion. At the start of the time trial, he was only 10 seconds down on Kristoff and so needed an 11 second gap to take victory. Chavanel went on to take the stage victory, finishing 19 seconds ahead of Anton Vorobyev and 32 seconds ahead of former race leader, Kristoff. It was therefore Chavanel who took overall victory, ahead of Kristoff at 22 seconds down and his teammate, Niki Terpstra, who was 31 seconds down.