Boucles de la Mayenne: Olav Kooij claims another win on stage 3

Pedersen, who benefitted from a strong lead-out from teammate Søren Kragh Andersen, launched first but didn’t have the pace to hold on to the finish line as Kooij sped past. John Degenkolb (Picnic-PostNL) beat Maikel Zijlaard (Tudor) to take third place.

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Meanwhile, there was no drama for stage 2 winner Benoît Cosnefroy (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), who finished safely in the peloton to score the overall victory, his fourth of the 2026 season.

He beats Thibaud Gruel (Groupama-FDJ United) to the win by seven seconds.

“I’m very happy – especially since I could throw my hands in the air yesterday, which is the highlight of the week,” Cosnefroy said.

“As for today, my team and I accomplished our mission. There were a lot of supporters around to make the race even sweeter, and I want to say a big ‘kudos’ to the organisers because they really took care of every detail so we could race safely.

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“We had to be very focused throughout the day in order to keep the leader’s jersey, as we had to watch out for the tactics of rivals like Groupama’s Thibaud Gruel, who was chasing bonus seconds in the intermediate sprint.”

The break of the day – Pierre Thierry (TotalEnergies), Ethan Hayter (Soudal-QuickStep), Matthias Schwarzbacher (EF Education-EasyPost), and Edoardo Zamperini (Cofidis) – went clear 10km after the start of the 147.7km stage. However, they wouldn’t last to the finish, and were caught 4.4km from the finish line.

From there, the sprint teams took over, with Lidl-Trek, Decathlon CMA CGM, and Visma-Lease a Bike hitting the front. In the end, it was Lidl-Trek who held the prime position in the final two kilometres.

Behind them, however, Kooij was in prime position to strike, working his way up the line to pass Alberto Dainese (Soudal-QuickStep) and Marijn van den Berg (EF Education-EasyPost) to grab Pedersen’s wheel and go by for the win.