Fought for his wheel, but Pedersen holds off surprise puncher: "It was close, but no cigar"

The 25-year-old Australian was definitely on the longlist of potential winners ahead of stage three, but the fact that he really pushed Pedersen to the limit came as a bit of a surprise. Though not to Strong himself, as he explained afterward: “It was a close sprint. I've always had confidence I can take it to these guys in a sprint if I get a good run, and today I had a lot of confidence.”

“In stage one, I got unlucky with a crash in the final 5 kilometers,” he said, explaining why he wasn’t in the mix back then. “Today, I had confidence I could go for the win. It was really hard, I had to fight a lot on the climb, but yeah. This season hasn't gone the way I wanted it to, so I was hoping I was going to bounce back with a big win. Close, but no cigar. We got a really nice team here and I think we can take confidence from today and achieve some stage wins later on.”

The fact that Strong was even able to take second place was quite a surprise after the final climb of the day. “I lost a bit of confidence on the descent. I dropped off before the top of the climb, but it also took longer to come back on the descent, because here on these roads for some reason, at slow speeds, I was feeling really unconfident. It took me a while to come back, but luckily Fuglsang (Jakob, ed.) was there with me. For sure, it took a bit of energy, but when I was chasing back on, I knew I had good legs.”

That paid off in the sprint, which featured a fierce battle for position. “I made a good move to get onto Pedersen’s wheel with about 1.5 kilometers to go. He was the hot favorite coming into today. I wasn't the only guy wanting his wheel, but I managed to get on his wheel for the sprint. To be honest, maybe I had a bit too much confidence in myself, because I really thought I might have been able to overtake him, but I guess he showed me why he's at the top of everyone's list for stages like this.”