Caleb Ewan leads the 2017 OVO Energy Tour of Britain general classification after taking his second stage victory of the race so far.
In a repeat of Sunday’s race opener in Kelso, the Orica-Scott rider beat Team Dimension Data’s Edvald Boasson Hagen into second in a sprint finish in Scunthorpe on stage three.
The Australian is now six seconds clear of Team Sky’s Elia Viviani, who won Monday’s stage.
"Today was a tough day obviously with the weather,“ said Ewan after the rainy conditions. “So it wasn’t as straight forward as we would have hoped and I think it made it a bit harder.”
“We had to sit at the front all day, taking a bit of the wind and then with the hill coming up close to the finish line that made it a bit tricky as well."
The bunch brought back the remains of the day's breakaway with around 15-kilometres of racing to go, with Philippe Gilbert then causing panic among the sprinters teams by jumping clear on the drag up to the line.
“After Gilbert went, I was pretty confident in Luka Mezgec, he knows what he is doing so I could just follow him,” Ewan said. “He had to go pretty much full gas as soon as he started the lead out so that made it harder for me as well.
“To be honest, I was on his wheel and pretty pinned. As soon as he swung off I just gave it my all and did a big lunge for the line and luckily I just got the win ahead of Eddie.”
Great Britain Cycling Team’s Chris Lawless still leads the Best British rider standings and was the highest British finisher - crossing the line in 22nd place, on the same time as Ewan.
It was also a brilliant day for Team JLT Condor who managed to get two riders, Graham Briggs and Ian Bibby, in the five-rider breakaway.
The duo worked brilliantly together to make sure that between them they took maximum points in all of the day's intermediate competitions, resulting in Briggs picking up the Eisberg Sprints and SKODA King of the Mountains jerseys.
A terrific day for the team was capped off by Australian sprinter Brenton Jones taking fourth place on the stage overall.
The fourth stage heads to the East Midlands on Wednesday with riders set for a 165km race from Mansfield to Newark-on-Trent.
