The third stage of the Tour of the Basque Country went from Errenteria along the coast near San Sebastian, before it took the riders over many short yet hard ramps after 55 km. The last kilometre then took on a steep climb with gradients of up to 26 percent to the Hika Bodega winery in Amasa-Villabona where the race ended after 162 km. A reduced peloton containing Sergio Higuita and Emanuel Buchmann reached the last climb of the day, where Sergio launched an attack 300m before the finish. However, the Colombian collided with the barriers and lost his position in the group. He ended up crossing the finish line in 16th place, 20 seconds behind the day's winner Vingegaard. Emanuel Buchmann finished the stage, at 26 seconds behind.
Result
01 J. Vingegaard 3:51:58
02 M. Landa +0:02
03 E. Mas +0:02
16 S. Higuita +0:20
23 E. Buchmann +0:26
From the Finish Line
"It was a tough and technical parcours, and we knew we had a good chance to win the stage. The finale was explosive and particularly hard, but Emu positioned me very well. I wanted to set the pace over the final 300 metres, which had a gradient of 23 percent. So I tried to attack then and moved on the right side of the road to pass Lopez. But he moved when I was trying to go around him, and then I lost my stability and hit the barriers. It was bad luck, and leaves a bittersweet taste because it was a really good opportunity for us. But we're keeping our focus on the next stages and not losing motivation." - Sergio Higuita
"We wanted to honour the yellow jersey today, so we set out to control the race. We rode in front, had support from EF and particularly from Jumbo Visma, and it all worked out quite well. In the final, Emu's job was to counter the early attacks. Unfortunately, we didn't manage that so well because he just didn't have the legs today. Then we wanted to give Sergio our full support in the uphill sprint, and Emu put himself completely at his teammate's service there. When Sergio wanted to launch his sprint at 300 metres remaining, he tried to overtake Lopez, but unfortunately he moved to the right and Sergio crashed. In the end, we were unfortunately robbed of an absolute top result by this incident." - Christian Pömer, Sports Director