McNulty grabs lead as UAE win TTT, Evenepoel and Roglic hampered by rain

UAE Team Emirates swerved the late rainfall as they took top spot in the team time trial on Stage 3 at Paris-Nice, with Brandon McNulty seizing the leader’s jersey as a result.

Remco Evenepoel’s Soudal-QuickStep led at the intermediate checkpoint atop the Cote de Jussy, but rain hampered their charge as they faded to finish 22 seconds down in fourth on the undulating 26.9km Auxerre course.

Primoz Roglic has an even greater deficit to make up after his Bora-Hansgrohe outfit were reduced to just three riders for the second half of the race, their numerical disadvantage and weather contributing to an 11th-place finish, 54 seconds down.

UAE crossed the line with four riders – McNulty, Finn Fisher-Black, Joao Almeida, and Jay Vine – as they clocked 31’23”. Jayco-AlUla (+15”) and EF Education-EasyPost (+20”) also swerved the worst of the weather to finish second and third.

“I love this discipline, and we knew we were a strong team coming into it,” said Vine. “Everyone is pretty good at TTs in this team, so we knew we had a good shot at the win. We were fortunate to have pretty good weather as well, so to have the win like this is really, really cool.

“I’m not going to lie and say it didn’t make a difference. The rain came, and we came just before it, and for sure, it was beneficial for us.”

McNulty leads the general classification with the same time as team-mates Fisher-Black, Almeida and Vine. Evenepoel is 18 seconds back in eighth, with Roglic 54 seconds down in 28th.