Photo Credit: Cor Vos

Stage three at the Tour of the Alps saw the bunch tackle the second longest stage of the week, with an intriguing 162 kilometre long parcours from Imst to Naruns on the menu. Potentially a good day for the breakaway, it was an incredibly fast and attacking start to the stage before a group of 15 riders broke clear with Michael Storer riding well to make the move for the team.

The breakaway worked well together and extended their gap to almost three minutes at its peak, but with a few riders close on GC the peloton didn’t allow their advantage to grow any further and started to set a steady pace. However, the breakaway held onto over a one minute lead as they headed onto the last short but steep categorised climb of the day. Storer impressed on the sharp slopes, riding at his own tempo and making it into the now four rider group that went clear from the breakaway.

Going into the final ten kilometres the race was perfectly poised, with the remnants of the breakaway 25 seconds behind Storer’s lead group, with the peloton a further 35 seconds behind that. Storer’s group worked well together, all the way until under the flamme rouge where the chasing group had them within their sights. The sprint opened up early at around 250 metres to go, with Storer going all-out until the line, taking a very impressive third place on the day for the team.

“Today we wanted an aggressive race and that is definitely what we got,” expressed Storer after the stage. “There were big moves for the breakaway and I managed to get in a good group. The peloton kept us close but as the breakaway pushed on we held the gap. The GC moves didn’t happen too much in the peloton so I could try and hang on to the favourites and go for the sprint for the win. I’m really happy to have managed that today. We rode really well as a team and I’m happy with how it went.”

Team DSM coach Matt Winston added: “It was a really good result for Michael and the team. We wanted to make it difficult at the start and on the first climb the plan was to make it hard and force a good breakaway to keep the pressure on. Michael slid into that when it took a long, long time to go. He was there as a bridging post but when it looked on the final lap like it wasn’t going to come back, Michael started riding and was going for the stage victory. It’s a really nice step for him and his development to take a result like that.”