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Colombian national champion Alejandro Osorio (GW Erco Shimano) won stage 3 at the Tour Colombia after outsprinting late-race breakaway companion Rodrigo Contreras (Nu Colombia) in Tunja.
Contreras and Osorio formed a larger seven-rider breakaway that emerged on the final lap of racing, but the Nu Colombia rider attacked inside 2km to go and gained a slim lead over the rest of the group.
Osorio quickly responded, however, and crossed the gap, connecting with Contreras’ back wheel and winning the two-up sprint to the line.
Rigoberto Uran (EF Education-EasyPost) sprinted in for third place ahead of Jonathan Caicedo (Petrolike) in fourth, Egan Bernal (Colombia) in fifth, Iván Ramiro Sosa (Movistar Team) sixth, Adrián Bustamante (GW Erco Shimano) seventh and Edgar David Cadena (Petrolike) eight. All were in the initial last-lap breakaway.
Niccolò Bonifazio (Corratec-Vini Fantini) won the reduced group sprint for ninth place, crossing the line just 11 seconds behind the breakaway.
Osorio moved into the overall race lead, taking the jersey from stage 2 winner and overnight leader Harold Tejada (Astana-Qazaqstan). Tejada is now positioned in second overall at six seconds back, with Andrea Piccolo (EF Education-EasyPost) in third at 11 seconds.
More to come…
How it unfolded
The precise difficulty of the race profile was open to a variety of interpretations, but it was clear that any kind of circuit around Tunja, Colombia’s highest departmental capital, would be a demanding one. There’s no arguing with geography.
When Harold Tejada (Astana-Qazaqstan) seized the yellow jersey with an enterprising victory in Santa Rosa de Viterbo, he was already being asked to cast his mind ahead to the decisive summit finish on the Alto del Vino on Saturday. The Colombian could have guessed, however, that his rivals would be poised to probe him for any signs of weakness on Thursday’s attritional stage, which took in of eleven laps of a 12.9km circuit.
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