Lapthorne keeps grip on lead

LEILANI HATCH/Fairfax NZ

STILL ON TOP: Australian Darren Lapthorne, yellow jersey, kept the yellow leaders jersey after a tough ride through the hills of Pohangina and Apiti in the New Zealand Cycle Classic yesterday.

Relevant offers

Wet and hilly conditions in the Manawatu weren't enough to stop Australian Darren Lapthorne keeping the leader's jersey after stage three of the Manawatu Cycle Classic tour yesterday.

Lapthorne finished in the peloton, but his lead from Thursday was too big for the breakaway riders to overcome.

A fan of hill stages usually, Lapthorne said the wind and the rain early in the stage made it a lot harder and had been a shock for many of the Australians.

"Conditions were exactly like racing in Belgium: windy, wet and plenty of climbs."

He said today and tomorrow would probably be the hardest stages of the tour because it was a circuit and meant they would have to do a tough climb twice, and it would be harder if the weather was bad.

Because the peloton protected him from the wind in the middle of the pack, he said he wasn't too worried about breakaways, including yesterday's one which had a huge lead during the race.

"We were happy to let them go out to almost 10 minutes."

Sam Bewley, and Nick Lovegrove (Subway Pro Cycling) broke away just outside of Palmerston North and powered ahead of the pack to finish in front of Lapthorne and other chasers.

"Today was a tough stage and the Jayco team were quite aggressive at points," Lapthorne said. "They did try to make the general classification [time] up fast and controlled it really well.

"That's exactly how we wanted to do it."

Because the two breakaway riders weren't a real threat to the leader's jersey, the main group didn't chase too hard.

The Jayco AIS and Drapac teams controlled the peloton most of the day, and managed to keep Lapthorne and Thursday's stage winner Jay McCarthy (Jayco) at the top of the general classification.

Early in the race there was a crash between Palmerston North and Ashhurst with 12 riders involved.

One of the riders clipped the wing mirror of a parked car and went down, taking out a the riders around him.

The slippery conditions early in the day saw a number of minor crashes, but only a small number of riders did not finish.

Lapthorne leads the overall standings with a time of 7 hours 38 minutes 16 seconds, ahead of McCarthy at three seconds back and Campbell Flakemore (Genesys) at 1min 14sec back.

Jayco lead the team overall competition ahead of Team Type 1-Sanofi and Drapac.

Patrick Bevin from the Hudson Gavin Martin team is the new sprint leader and the leading under-23 rider and Joe Cooper keeps the King of the Mountain jersey.

The fourth stage today is a two-lap, 100km circuit from Palmerston North through Bunnythorpe, Awahou and Ashurst.

The fifth stage is a very similar course of 111.9km.

- © Fairfax NZ News