Columbia-Highroad’s Ina-Yoko Teutenberg avoided a major last-kilometre crash on stage three of the Tour de L’Aude to take her second win in three days.  Already the winner on Saturday, 48 hours later in the stage starting and finishing in Lezignan Corbieres, Teutenberg once again was the first across the line.   The German now has 17 stage wins in the Tour de L’Aude, an all-time record, and is holding the lead in the points classification.

“I was the only one to get through the crash, so I reached the line alone,” Teutenberg said afterwards.  “The rider who crashed slid and took out a lot of the others, but luckily I was able to get through.”  Teutenberg paid tribute to her Columbia-Highroad teammates who worked hard during the hilly 116- kilometre stage to reel in several dangerous moves.  “We collaborated with another team to bring back one rider and set things up for a sprint.  Then they put me in the right position.  With a team of just six riders it’s never easy to do everything but they did a great job.”

With just one more fairly flat day’s racing left to go before the Tour de L’Aude hits the mountains, even though she is just two seconds behind the race leader, Teutenberg says her main aim is to go for a third  win.  “I’m not really thinking about getting in the yellow jersey again.  If that happens, it happens. Really, I’m just going for another stage. The same thing applies to the green points jersey. If I can defend it, great, but then again maybe some climber will get a lot of points in the mountains and I lose it.  So I’ll just take it on the day-by-day, rather than look too far ahead.”