Elise Chabbey narrowly missed the win when she sprinted to second in yesterday’s stage three at the Ceratizit Challenge by La Vuelta. The CANYON//SRAM Racing rider had a blistering attack less than 10km to the finish line and was joined by Grace Brown (FDJ). The duo stayed ahead of a strong chase group, but Brown could out-sprint Elise in the final metres.

The short 96km stage was raced hard from the beginning and quickly split into several groups. A front group of around 25 leaders formed with Chabbey and Kasia Niewiadoma present for the team after around 50km.

“The pace was hard from the beginning, as many teams wanted a breakaway. Attacks went all the time, and the climb was paced super hard,” explained Elise.

“In the end, we were a small group, and Kasia attacked many times. I was tired but attacked, and was happy to see that Grace joined me, and we worked well together to get a gap. I’m disappointed to finish second, but Grace is a great rider, so chapeau to her. I need to improve in those situations.”

With bonus seconds for second place on the stage, Elise is now ninth in the general classification, at +3:20 behind leader Annemiek van Vleuten (MOV).

HOW TO FOLLOW

Ceratizit Challenge by La Vuelta can be followed on Twitter with #CERATIZITchallenge22. A global broadcast is available on RTVE, TV3 Catalunya, CRTVG, EiTB (Spain), TV2 (Norway), NBCUniversal (USA), SuperSport (Subsaharan Africa), Zhibo.tv (China), GCN (worldwide), NOS (Netherlands), FloBikes (Canada), SBS (Australia), Sky Sport (New Zealand), Eurosport Asia (South East Asia & Pacific), ESPN (Latin America and Caribbean), Eurosport (Europe), DKTV2 (Denmark), Sports (Japan), RTVC Señal (Colombia).

Stage 4 | 10 September | Palencia – Segovia | 160km | Race start 14:37 | Broadcast 18:20CEST

Stage 5 | 11 September | Madrid | 95.6km | Race start 12:00 | Broadcast 13:30CEST

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