He looked it in the eyes, nurtured it, possibly even figured how it would feel. In the end, only 100 metres stood between Colombia-Coldeportes’ Rodolfo Torres and the dream of his first European win: the final ones of Skoda Tour de Luxembourg stage 3, Eschweiler-Diekirch (161 km).

Fifteen kilometres at full gas, after leaving the company of five more escapees - Arnaud Gérard (Bretagne-Séché), Romain Hardy (Cofidis), Patrick Olesen (Leopard Development), Jens Debusschere (Lotto-Soudal), Laurent Evrard (Wallonie-Bruxelles) – on the final climb of the day, did not prove enough to hold back the pack, edged in the sprint by Andrè Greipel (Lotto-Soudal) ahead of Lars Van Den Haar (Giant-Alpecin) and Enrico Gasparotto (Wanty-Gobert). German Linus Gerdemann (Cult Energy) held on the leader’s jersey, with Miguel Angel Rubiano, 9th on the day, sitting just outside of the top 10, 11th at 1.01, just ahead of Fabio Duarte.

The outstanding effort of Torres, who started the day’s attempt about 50 km into the stage, also helped Fabio Duarte who held on the KOM leader’s jersey: after the first climb of the day, where Duarte was first ahead of Torres, the latter led the bunch on all the other categorized climbs, defending Duarte’s lead and moving into second position in the special classification.

Sports Director Valerio Tebaldi’s words certainly had a bitter taste afterwards: “Today we saw a team racing at its very best, and a rider up front, Torres, who has been extraordinary throughout the whole season, but the big goal seems to elude him. We perfectly stuck to the plan, making the race as hard as we could early on, and doing all we could to disrupt the chase in the finale: honestly, this outcome leaves a bitter taste in our mouth. Tomorrow we have another though stage , and the team does not want to leave empty-handed. We will give it another shot.”

The final stage, the fourth, on Sunday June 7th will lead the riders from Mersch to Luxembourg (156 km).