KEY POINTS:
New Zealand cyclist Greg Henderson won the third stage and claimed the overall lead of the Tour de Georgia today.
Henderson finished the 174km race from Washington to Gainesville in three hours 55 minutes 45 seconds, edging Team High Road teammate Andre Greipel by four-tenths of a second and Slipstream-Chipotle's Tyler Farrar by six-tenths.
The victory moved Henderson into the overall lead at 10hrs 58min 17sec. Farrar was 9sec back and Juan Jose Haedo was another 2sec behind.
Henderson also led the sprint category with 38 points, eight ahead of Farrar. Cuba's Ivan Dominguez lost the overall lead and dropped to third with 25 points.
Farrar's teammate Tim Duggan suffered a head injury after a six-man pile-up caused him to crash on a descent about 65km into the race at the Broad River. His spokeswoman Marya Pongrace said Duggan was listed in stable condition at Athens Regional Medical Centre and expected to be discharged tomorrow.
If Team High Road can win the seven-day race that ends in downtown Atlanta, riders like Henderson can claim that professional cycling is cleaning up its drug-riddled image.
General manager Bob Stapleton formed Team High Road from the remains of a squad that lost lead sponsor T-Mobile five months ago. Team High Road say they use the sport's most stringent testing programme for performance-enhancing drugs.
Henderson and Greipel were among the half-dozen of 29 riders Stapleton retained from the T-Mobile team.
Cycling has been rocked by doping scandals, the most prominent of which led to American Floyd Landis having his 2006 Tour de France title stripped.
Henderson might not have won the stage without help from Greipel and teammate George Hincapie. Greipel helped to edge out Farrar as a favour to Henderson, who helped the German win the Tour Down Under in Australia this year.
Hincapie was Team High Road's lead-out rider with about half a kilometre remaining, which created the space for Henderson to cross the finish line.
"I've come off some pretty good form at the moment," Henderson told Associated Press.
"I showed in the last couple races in Europe that I'm in a pretty good nick. I've sacrificed myself a lot for the team over in Europe, and they've decided it's time to give me a chance to try to win. I'm happy to be able to try to do that."
The former world track champion now holds a nine-second lead over Farrar, having led Dominguez by 3sec at the start of the third stage.
"Greipel woke me up today and said, `Today you strong!"' said Henderson
"The three of us (the other being Hincapie) were together in the last corner and it was a drag between Greipel and me to the line."
High Road were the most organised coming into the final turns of a technical and fast final circuit.
"I knew that we were going to go fast behind so I stayed cool and hit out with a kilometre to go and took him to 500 metres," said Hincapie.
From there is was flat until 300m to go when the road pitched downwards, putting the final sprint in the saddle and at warp speed.
"The sprint was deceiving because it actually ended at the top of the hill," said Henderson.
"Even though we were going down hill, I couldn't press any harder on the pedals and it's hard for people to pace you on a downhill. I think that our speeds in the finish were about 70km/h by the time we got to the line. So the race was really to the top of the hill."
Henderson said he used some skills from track racing in the fast finish.
"I think my track racing helped me today because we were so full of lactic acid with 200 metres to go that I think my sprint was down in the seat," he said.
"Coming from the track all my sprints are done in the seat."
- NZPA
