On a day when commentators touted a handful of favorites to win a grueling bike race, a little known 26-year-old from Portugal handily won his first ProTour victory on Stage 3 of the Tour Down Under on Thursday.
Cyclist Manuel Cardoso of Footon-Servetto charged ahead of the peloton, leaving the big names of Alejandro Valverde (Caisse d'Epargne) and world champion Cadel Evans (BMC Racing) to finish in 2nd and 3rd.
There were reports from the final lap around Stirling that Gert Steegmans and Lance Armstrong moved to the front of the peloton for Team RadioShack, but neither was a factor in the finish.
Armstrong finished in the first pack to finish in 30th, 1 second behind Cardoso. Overall, he sits in 26th place, 20 seconds behind the leader, Andre Greipel.
There's not much information out there about Cardoso, who hadn't earned his own Wikipedia entry yet. CyclingNews reports that Cardoso won the Portuguese national road race championship last year and had victories in the Volta a Portugal, Volta ao Algarve and Circuit du Lorraine.
Cardoso had been a member of Liberty Seguros last year, until it disbanded before the end of the season.
Thursday's stage (which rolled out Wednesday evening in the US time zones) was a hotly contested 83-mile race from Unley to Stirling, where cyclists sprinted uphill to the finishline.
It seemed like half the members of the peloton attacked the peloton at one time or another, with at leat 6 or 7 breakaways surviving for a few minutes.
Unlike the previous stages, these breakaways couldn't establish gaps of much more than a minute before HTC-Columbia and Caisse d'Epargne reeled them back in.
Columbia was guarding its overall leader,Greipel, who had won stages 1 and 2 of the Tour, which ends Sunday. Greipel still holds a 14 second overall lead.
Caisse d'Epargne apparently was hoping to set up something for Valverde, who was making his first visit to the Tour Down Under.
Their strong finishes did boost Valverde and Evans into the Top 10 overall.
Top 10 finishers on Stage 3
1 Manuel Cardoso – Footon-Servetto-Fuji ,
2 Alejandro Valverde – Caisse D'Epargne ,
3 Cadel Evans – BMC Racing Team ,
4 Peter Sagan- Liquigas Doimo,
5 Mauro Finetto – Liquigas Doimo,
6 Kristjan Koren – Liquigas Doimo ,
7 Luke Roberts – Milram,
8 Markus Fothen – Milram,
9 Anthony Roux – Francaise Des Jeux ,
10 Eduard Vorganov (RUS) – Team Katusha
Top 10 Overall
1. Andre Greipel – HTC Columbia
2. Greg Henderson – Sky; 14 seconds behind
3. Gert Steegmans – RadioShack; same
4. Alejandro Valverde – Caisse d'Epargne; same
5. Robbie McEwen — Katusha; 16 seconds
6. Jurgen Roelandts – Omega; same
7. Cadel Evans – BMC Racing; same
8. Andriy Brivko – Astana; 19 seconds
9. Graeme Brown – Rabobank; 20 seconds
10. Robbie Hunter – Garmin; 20 seconds
19. George Hincapie – BMC Racing; 20 seconds
26. Lance Armstrong – RadioShack; 20 seconds
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