Having finished third in the sprint on the Champs-Elysees, Ramunas Navardauskas is usually very fast. However, he was beaten by Sep Vanmarcke in yesterday's three-rider sprint in the Tour of Alberta and wrote it down to the Belgian's better bike-handling skills.

Going into the three-rider sprint in stage 3 of the Tour of Alberta, it was a tough call to determine the favourite. Leigh Howard, Ramunas Navarduaskas and Sep Vanmarcke are all known for their fast sprints and all had a great chance of coming away with the win.

In the end, it came down to tactics and bike-handling skills as Vanmarcke went faster through the final turns than his rivals, gaining a small gap that he held all the way to the line. Having already finished second on stage 1, Navardauskas regretted another near-miss but was full of praise for his rival.

"I pulled the last kilometer, but I was still hoping to sit close on the wheel of Sep and try a slower sprint because it was big wind," Navardauskas said. "But Sep is a good handler of the bike, and when he went into the last corner I could hear his tire slipping. He was really going on the edge, so I lost like 10 meters, and I thought, 'OK, that's it.' If I made that first corner, then Sep had big trouble to overpass me because it was a really short sprint. But he knew how to do it."