{"id":99981,"date":"2025-08-29T03:05:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T03:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/99981\/"},"modified":"2025-08-29T03:05:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T03:05:11","slug":"tour-poitou-charentes-samuel-leroux-dominates-stage-3-individual-time-trial-and-moves-into-gc-lead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/99981\/","title":{"rendered":"Tour Poitou-Charentes: Samuel Leroux dominates stage 3 individual time trial and moves into GC lead"},"content":{"rendered":"

Samuel Leroux (TotalEnergies) posted the best time on the stage 3 individual time trial at Tour Poitou-Charentes en Nouvelle Aquitaine<\/a> and surprised the field by taking the overall lead with his victory.<\/p>\n

Once in the hot seat of the 27.3km race against the clock, Leroux watched as 38 other riders failed to come close to his time of 33:03. Nicolas Milesi (Ark\u00e9a-B&B Hotels), the best young rider with one stage to go, came closest at 22 seconds back. Cl\u00e9ment Berthet (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) finished third, another 2 seconds down.<\/p>\n

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Leroux vaulted 38 spots in the GC to take the race lead from Arnaud D\u00e9mare (Ark\u00e9a-B&B Hotels), who plummeted to 49th position, now 3:26 away. Dorian Godon (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) remained second overall with a fifth-place finish in the ITT, now 20 seconds back. Milesi moved into third overall, 22 seconds back.<\/p>\n

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“From the start, I felt like I was on a fast pace. Having the time reference of Pierrot [Latour], who started before me, motivated me enormously,” Leroux said on a team social post, translated from French. “I told the team at the beginning of the year that this was one of my goals, and I’m proud to have achieved it.<\/p>\n

“This victory has a special meaning for me; it’s especially dedicated to my uncle, who is ill. I’m thinking of him a lot and I’m happy to give it to him.”<\/p>\n

The victory was in some way a vindication for an overnight theft <\/a>which left the team without 20 of their Enve bicycles, worth an estimated \u20ac300,000 by news reports. The team competed with their time trial bikes on Thursday.<\/p>\n

“You shouldn’t have angered him\u2026 ” the team posted to X.com following the powerful demonstration of Leroux.<\/p>\n

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\"JARDRES,\n<\/p>\n

All smiles for Samuel Leroux (TotalEnergies) as he celebrates stage 3 victory (Image credit: Getty Images)<\/p>\n

The Tour Poitou-Charentes has included an individual time trial each of the past 20 years. The 27.3km route for this edition followed a flat, northerly path between the two cities, which are just six kilometres apart. Time checks were positioned at kilometre 9 and again at kilometre 18.5, with one small climb averaging 5.8% out of the dip to cross the Vienne River that runs through western France.<\/p>\n

Sam Bennett (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) was the first of the 99 riders to complete the course and set the benchmark at 38:23. That number did not hold for long and times dropped through a series of riders in the first half of the field.<\/p>\n

Pierre Latour (TotalEnergies) was the first rider to go under the 33-minute mark first and posted 33:32. His spot on the hotseat was threatened by Thibault Guernalec (Ark\u00e9a-B&B Hotels) and Th\u00e9o Delacroix (St Michel-Preference Home-Auber93), but they fell 3 and 6 seconds short, respectively.<\/p>\n

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\"JARDRES,\n<\/p>\n

Nicolas Milesi (Ark\u00e9a-B&B Hotels) moved to third overall with his fifth-place finish on stage 3 (Image credit: Getty Images)<\/p>\n

The needle lowered to 33:03 by Leroux who took the hot seat from his teammate, averaging 49.6 kph. Nicolas Milesi (Ark\u00e9a-B&B Hotels) and Cl\u00e9ment Berthet (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) were the next to go under 33 minutes, but were still more than 22 seconds back.<\/p>\n

Leroux became comfortable with his long tenure in the hot seat continued with 26 more riders to follow Milesi. His time at the first checkpoint held at 11:04 once the GC leaders passed. Then his top time across the second checkpoint, 22:57, was also not matched.<\/p>\n

The only rider in the top of the standings to pose a threat was Godon, who was 10th fastest at the first time check, but finish fifth on the stage, 30 seconds back.<\/p>\n

The 30-year-old Frenchman held on for his first win of the season.<\/p>\n

“Tomorrow, a great stage awaits us, with wind\u2026 And coming from the north, I’m used to it. We’ll do everything we can to bring it back. We have a great group,” the new GC leader said about the final stage on Friday.<\/p>\n

Results<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Samuel Leroux (TotalEnergies) posted the best time on the stage 3 individual time trial at Tour Poitou-Charentes en…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":99982,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-99981","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99981\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}