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Juan Ayuso (UAE Team Emirates) won the four-man sprint to the line to take the victory at the Faun-Ardèche Classic on Saturday.
The Spaniard was part of a late-race breakaway that emerged over the penultimate ascent, Saint-Romain-de-Lerps, and held a slim lead on the chasing field on the run-in to the finish in Guilherand-Granges.
Romain Grégoire (Groupama-FDJ) was the first to launch his sprint, but Ayuso passed him at the finish line to take the win. Grégoire hung on for second while Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek) was third and Felix Gall (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale Team) fourth.
The Faun-Ardèche Classic was 168.6km starting at Guilherand-Granges with several large circuits and the finish back at Guilherand-Granges. The challenging route that included eight categorised ascents.
An early breakaway included Fredrik Dversnes (Uno-X Mobility), Melvin Crommelinck (Nice Métropole Côte d’Azur), and Antoine Hue (CIC U Nantes Atlantique), who held a two-minute lead at the halfway point of the race.
The breakaway split apart with 57km to go as Hue was distanced from the leaders, and Dversnes and Crommelinck tried desperately to maintain a slim lead that had been slashed to just 10 seconds after the late-race Val d’Enfer ascent.
Over the ascent of the Saint-Romain-de-Lerps (6.3km at 7.6%), a new breakaway emerged that included Juan Ayuso (UAE Team Emirates), Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek), Romain Grégoire (Groupama-FDJ) and Felix Gall (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale Team).
The quartet gained over a minute on the chasing field into the final 7km and with one last climb over the short but steep Val d’Enfer (1.5km at 10.6%).
Gall struggled to stay with the leaders over the last ascent but caught back on along the…
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