Visma-Lease a Bike overcame some notable setbacks to safely outpower the opposition in the crucial Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes team time trial on stage 3, blasting home nine seconds faster than Netcompany Ineos and 29 seconds on third-placed EF Education-EasyPost.
Despite the loss of TT powerhouses Wout van Aert early on and then Ben Tulett due to a back wheel puncture, the Dutch squad remained calm and consistent on the rolling 28-kilometre course, their victory ensuring team leader and 2024 race runner-up Matteo Jorgenson could leapfrog up the overall standings.
EF’s late strength in numbers allowed overall leader Alex Baudin to fly up the final climb and remain in the yellow jersey.
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Netcompany Ineos duo Kévin Vauquelin and Oscar Onley were able to profit strongly from the race’s first big GC challenge, though a late dropped chain for the latter did cost them some valuable time. Juan Ayuso similarly gained time on some, after Lidl-Trek claimed fourth on the day, 32 seconds back on Visma.
While EF’s late strength in numbers allowed overall leader Alex Baudin to fly up the final climb and remain in the yellow jersey, Netcompany Ineos duo Kévin Vauquelin and Oscar Onley were able to profit strongly from the race’s first big GC challenge. So too did Juan Ayuso after Lidl-Trek claimed fourth on the day, 32 seconds back on Visma.
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A dropped chain for Onley did cost Ineos vital time in the fight for the stage win and the yellow jersey, as his teammates had to wait for him to get back on after he’d re-strung it.
Standout favourite Paul Seixas‘ Decathlon CMA CGM squad delivered a solid but not exceptionally brilliant time, 45 seconds down, whilst Isaac del Toro now has work to do after UAE Team Emirates-XRG finished a full 61 seconds back on Jorgenson.
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“I was just saying in a French interview it’s seven times better than winning on your own,” Jorgenson told race TV afterwards, “Because we get the moment right afterwards together, which in cycling you don’t often get where you win together with your teammates, it’s a really cool discipline and a really nice day.”
As for the setbacks they’d suffered, Jorgenson said, “It didn’t really go as planned at all: “We lost Wout pretty early, he wasn’t feeling super and then Ben flatted and almost crashed on the main descent, so that was a hairy moment.
“But we adapted well and we could rearrange things and readjust and honestly, I think the last ten kilometres we couldn’t have gone any faster. I was given a free ride to the last climb.”
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On a personal level, the US rider said, “It feels good to win a race and it is really nice after the spring I’ve had, to come back and be on top again.”
However, the former double Paris-Nice winner was cagey about his chances of adding the newly renamed Tour Auvergne-Rhòne-Alpes to his palmares this June, simply saying “I think we should take it one day at a time.”
Picnic PostNL were the first team of 24 out of the blocks, their impressively fast average speed of well over 47 kmh, despite the course’s constantly rolling and twisting network of rural roads, showing the shape of things to come, with one supersonically quick performance succeeding another all afternoon.
However, it was not enough to stop Lotto-Intermarché’s final man grinding his way up the very technical final 700 metre ascent to clip three seconds off the Dutch team’s time, though nor yet did it prevent NSN’s last rider in their string, New Zealand veteran George Bennett, from then stopping the clock a second faster.
Jayco-AlUla had promised pre-race that they would be targeting the TTT both in Auvergne and the Tour de France, and their time of 33:46, a considerable margin ahead of NSN’s, amply proved their point. Michael Matthews celebrated his first race back in months by crossing the line in first place for his squad, whilst teammate and former multiple National TT Champion Luke Plapp was just a few metres back, too, underlining the squad’s collective strength in depth.
However, a lot of top squads were yet to finish, with UAE Team Emirates-XRG’s Kevin Vermarcke firing Isaac del Toro up the final part of the climb to fall just a couple of seconds short of Jayco-AlUla’s time.
The two mid-stage ascents, though, proved very tricky for teams to calculate their effort, and after several teams fell short, the day’s first major surprise came when Movistar – once so dominant in Vuelta a España team time trials a decade and more ago – rolled back the years for a serious challenge at victory.
Not even followed by a TV cameraman, given the Spanish squad’s chances were so underestimated, leader Cian Uijtdebroeks nonetheless pulled out an impressive result, finishing one second ahead of the Australian squad’s time.
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As Movistar’s riders watched the TV screens in the hot seat area, though, they could see from other teams’ performances that their provisional best time was set for a very limited shelf life. True, Paul Seixas’ Decathlon CMA CGM were more thereabouts than there, finally finishing sixth on the stage, but the 2026 Paris-Nice TTT winners
Netcompany Ineos, on the other hand were truly on a roll. At the first time check at the top of the first of two draggy climbs, the Coutouvre, the British squad already stopped the clock 12 seconds up on Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe and 13 ahead of another top performer, Lidl-Trek.
At that point, Visma-Lease a Bike ran Ineos close, just two seconds behind at checkpoint 1, but when one of Visma’s key riders, Wout van Aert, had already been dropped after just six kilometres and then another, Ben Tulett, had a puncture, it looked as if the Dutch team would be fighting to stay in contention, let alone pushing for the win.
Lidl-Trek, on the other hand, had no such issues, finishing an impressive 20 seconds faster than Movistar, as Mattias Skjelmose all but dragged co-leader Juan Ayuso up the final ascent.
Despite all the chatter following the recent team management changes, the German squad showed they are always a collective force to be reckoned with, and their time of 33:24 certainly looked like a hard one to beat.
As for Paul Seixas, his slipping back wheel on a sharp right-hander at the foot of the climb did not augur well, but losing 14 seconds on Lidl-Trek by the finish did not constitute a poor result by any means, particularly considering the French team did not have a full TTT squad, packing it instead with climbers.
Netcompany Ineos’ 20-second advantage on Lidl-Trek, on the other hand, showed they were going from strength to strength, and with five riders at 10 kilometres to go, it looked very good for the British squad. However, when Oscar Onley then dropped his chain immediately afterwards, there was a notable delay, with co-leader Kevin Vauquelin waving his arm in frustration at the wait.
But wait they did, and after British National TT champ Josh Tarling dropped away at 800 metres to go, his work done, Onley then blasted onwards up that painful final ascent. Even when Spanish GC specialist Carlos Rodríguez cracked, Vauquelin immediately took over, pulling away mightily to ensure that Netcompany became the provisional top squad on the day, 22 seconds up on Lidl-Trek.
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After Lidl-Trek’s huge performance and Netcompany Ineos then knocking them out of the park, the changes were coming thick and fast on the leaderboard, but the most important one of all came when Jorgenson came roaring up the final climb for Visma-Lease a Bike.
While it’s worth wondering if their victory could have been even more impressive had the Dutch squad not lost two key elements of their TTT collective, like Van Aert and Tulett, early on, the American could still depend on French TT champion Bruno Armirail and young teammate Jørgen Nordhagen to lead him down the fast descent to the foot of the final climb.
After which the American star stormed up the 8% slopes to topple the seemingly unbeatable time set by Netcompany Ineos by a full nine seconds, and ensure Visma-Lease a Bike took a well-deserved victory.
Quite apart from boding well for Jonas Vingegaard’s chances in Barcelona’s equivalent TTT in the Tour in just over three weeks time, Jorgenson’s success has also pushed him into fourth overall in the Tour of Auvergne, 15 seconds down on race leader Baudin.
The winners of the Paris-Nice TTT back in 2025, that year’s success proved critical for Jorgenson to take the overall for a second time in the Course Au Soleil, and it remains to be seen how he will now benefit from such a strong performance in the mountain stages to come.
Both Seixas and Isaac del Toro, not to mention Juan Ayuso and Oscar Onley, could well give the American a major run for his money, but Jorgenson is looking like a real threat for overall victory.
After Tuesday’s set-piece GC battle, mass-start racing resumes on Wednesday with a fascinatingly unpredictable stage from Le Puy-en-Velay to Montrond-les-Bains, given its very hilly first 130 kilometres and pan-flat final hour. If Baudin holds the upper hand for now, the GC battle could yet restart again, even before the race reaches the Alps on Saturday.
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