Cannondale-Drapac will continue to #rockthedots at the Tour de France as the King of the Mountain jersey moved from the Taylor Phinney to Nate Brown on Monday following stage three. It was history in the making as Brown jumped to the top of the King of Mountain classification. Never before have two Americans worn polka dots in the same Tour.

“If you had told me I’d be the one to take the jersey, I would have told you that you were crazy, even this morning,” Brown said. “Obviously we had Phinney – if he had the aptitude to go into the break again today. It’s a tall task to ask someone to go into back-to-back breaks. Dylan [van Baarle] was our second guy. I was third on the list.”

Brown’s position at the top of the King of the Mountain classification, like Phinney’s, materialized from his ability to slip up the road. A three-rider escaped formed early. Phinney was tired from his outing on Sunday and Van Baarle had missed the move.

“The peloton completely blocked the field,” said Brown. “They weren’t going to let anyone by, but there was this Wanty guy that really, really wanted in on it, and I knew that. I stuck on his wheel. We got to this section where he could use a dirt road on the side to go around. I went with him, and we made it across.”

Nate Brown tops Tour’s King of the Mountain classification weiterlesen →