The 25-year-old scored his second top five of the week, after the one in the ITT.<\/p>\n
Ilan Van Wilder bounced back after a tough stage two and put himself in contention for a top ten overall finish at the World Tour race. The peloton spent the day around Basauri, and even though the parcours was milder than the one of Tuesday, it still had plenty of hills that ended up playing in favour of the breakaway.<\/p>\n
Soudal Quick-Step\u2019s Belgian was one of the 15 riders that went in the breakaway, and with none of them a GC threat, the bunch allowed this group to take their maximum advantage north of three minutes. It was only when they entered the last 20 kilometers that the chasers decided to increase the tempo, but by that point, the escapees knew the stage would belong to them.<\/p>\n
One of the strongest guys in that move, Ilan worked hard the entire day, initially to help the group extend their lead, and in the last kilometers, to reduce the gap separating them from two men who had attacked on one of the day\u2019s climbs. It was thanks to his solid effort that the breakaway came close to bringing the duo back and fighting for the victory, which eventually went to Axel Laurance (Ineos Grenadiers). On the 1600m climb to the line, Van Wilder continued to dig deep and accelerated to take the last bonus seconds still in play, before concluding fourth. It was a result that helped him gain five places on the general classification, where he now sits just half a minute from the top ten.<\/p>\n
I had better feelings today, so it was my goal to make it into the break.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe start was a fast one, as many teams wanted to be present there. It took some time and effort to have a breakaway form, and when it happened, almost all of the guys there were on the limit. In the end, we managed to survive. It\u2019s a pity that I missed the podium, but despite this, it was a good day\u201d, Ilan explained at the finish.<\/p>\n
Photo credit: \u00a9Tim De Waele \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 25-year-old scored his second top five of the week, after the one in the ITT. Ilan Van…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":594057,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-594056","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cycling","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=594056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/594057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=594056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=594056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=594056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}