The Amgen Tour of California 170-kilometer stage three began and finished in San Jose with 10,200 feet of climbing in between. The sprinters had a back seat today as the climbers endured the first big test of the eight-day race.

A seven-man breakaway animated the stage, but over the hors catégorie Mt. Hamilton only one rider remained in the lead, 23-year-old Latvian Toms Skujins (Hincapie Racing Team). 

Skujins padded his lead on the tricky downhill and never looked back; he took a courageous solo win by over a minute from the chasing peloton and snatched the overall lead by 32 seconds.

Trek Factory Racing’s plan going into stage three was to jump into a breakaway and help generate the action at the head of the race, but when the flag dropped it was quickly apparent this would not unfold as hoped, explained director Alain Gallopin:

“Directly from the start Sky and Tinkoff-Saxo controlled the race and didn’t let a big group go. I did not expect Tinkoff to work like this for Sagan as I thought Mt. Hamilton was too hard for him. In our pre-race plan, we hoped to follow a big group, but the way it played out it wasn’t possible for some of us to go in a break. 

“Then at the end there were not too many teams that wanted to take the responsibility. We finished with three in the front and that is good for the rest of the race; we should have should some options after the TT."

Trek Factory Racing finished with Haimar Zubeldia, Riccardo Zoidl and Matthew Busche in the lead peloton, keeping the team’s GC hopes alive and well, while Laurent Didier crossed moments later after he initiated a late feisty attack to try and shake things up.

“The legs were good today, even though the stage was harder than I expected, especially the beginning was crazy. In the second to last climb in the downhill, there were two crashes and the peloton was split and I was behind. In the end, I was able to come back, thankfully," Zoidl said.

“It’s a very interesting race. There were a lot of attacks in the final 10k - you can see there is no clear favorite as no one wanted to take the lead [in the chase]. It’s a very open race and it will be interesting this week."

Gallopin described how Zoidl was fortunate to regain contact to the peloton: “Riccardo was caught behind when the peloton split on the descent, and we were a little bit lucky that a Smartstop rider had punctured and his team waited, and of course that there was no barrage afterward." 

"We don’t know who is the big favorite of the race," he continued, echoing Zoidl's words."It’s wide-open still and both Mt Baldy and the time trial will be critical. We have some guys who are okay in the time trial, so we will see.”

The Amgen Tour of California continues with stage four tomorrow, which should see a sprint finish arrive in Avila Beach.