Ewan flashes home at Tirreno-Adriatico to take sprint win

Caleb Ewan (Lotto Soudal) made the most of a chance to win on Stage 3 of Tirreno-Adriatico, opening his WorldTour account for 2022 with the hard-fought win in a gruelling sprint over the cobbled street in Terni.

Caleb Ewan of Lotto Soudal wins Stage 3 of the 2022 edition of Tirreno-Adriatico. Source: Getty Images

It appeared that the sprint would be won by Arnaud Demare (Groupama-FDJ) as he leapt from the pack in the bunch sprint, taking a lead into the final metres of the cobbled finish in Terni.

However, Caleb Ewan continued his run from back in the pack, slingshotting his way around the Frenchman on the grinding run to the line to take his first WorldTour win of the 2022 season, also his first victory in the Italian stage race.

"Today it was far from easy but this time we got it right in the race where I’ve wanted to win a stage for a long time," Ewan said after the stage.

"I saw Arnaud with one teammate left and they still looked quite good, so I was on his wheel, and they seemed to go at the right moment. I just knew I had to be top three or four in that last corner and a finish like that suits me when it's slightly uphill and a hard drag to the line.”

Ewan had to pilot himself without team help in the final kilometres after a stage which had required his teammates to bring him back from three separate mechanical stops in the final 80 kilometres of racing, and also chasing down the break of the day and a late, dangerous move by Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates) and Julian Alaphlippe (QuickStep Alpha Vinyl).

"I had to use a lot of guys, a lot of my teammates, with that late attack because you can't give those guys so much time," said Ewan.

"I used a lot of guys there and I knew that if I was on my own and I could follow the right wheels that I'd know what to do at the finish. So that's what I did, I committed my guys to bringing it back and then I could finish it off in the end."

Filippo Ganna (INEOS Grenadiers) came into the stage as the leader of the general classification, 11 seconds ahead of Remco Evenepoel (Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl) and 17 in front of Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates).

A breakaway group of several riders formed early into the race on the stage's toughest climb to La Foce. Davide Bais (Eolo-Kometa) reached the top of the day's only classified climb first to extend his KOM classification lead.

The gap between the peloton and the breakaway riders stayed within grasp as the stage progressed, with the break recovered as the peloton reached an intermediate sprint atop a hill. Pogačar attacked clear from the peloton and won the sprint ahead of Marc Soler (UAE Team Emirates) and Julian Alaphillipe (Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl), before the trio simply decided to continue their acceleration, with Tao Geoghegan Hart (INEOS Grenadiers) joining the aggression. 

The trio's advantage was to last seven kilometres, before they were recovered, with the sprint teams spoiling for a big battle into Terni.

The lead-out trains of Jumbo-Visma and TotalEnergies were prominent in the run towards the line, but it was Démare who was first through the final turn of the race 300m from the line, a technical left-hander that wiped off a lot of the speed heading into the drag race to the finish.

The Frenchman looked to be capable of holding on, but Ewan loomed behind and overtook his rival in the final few metres, beating Demare, with Olav Kooij (Jumbo-Visma) in third.