Laurance Launches, Arrieta Folds: Axel Laurance Wins Itzulia Stage 3 in Basauri as the Breakaway Finally Lands a Blow
For the first time at this year's Itzulia Basque Country, the day did not end with a Decathlon-AG2R-La Mondiale rider hauling his arms above his head on the finish line. On a rolling 152.8-kilometre loop out of and back into Basauri, a 16-rider breakaway that had spent almost four hours off the front of the peloton finally forced the stage to answer to them — and when the front group splintered one final time on the short climb of Sarasola with 25 kilometres remaining, it was Axel Laurance of INEOS Grenadiers who emerged from the fragments with the legs to finish the job. A punchy two-up uphill sprint on the Basauri ramp gave the 24-year-old Frenchman the biggest win of his young career, ahead of Igor Arrieta of UAE Team Emirates-XRG and a stage that, for once, the GC men had no way of controlling.
The move had formed on the long drag through Zeanuri inside the opening thirty kilometres and had been allowed to go with Decathlon-AG2R's blessing. Sixteen riders — Laurance and Arrieta among them, along with strong names like Neilson Powless, Harold Tejada, Florian Vermeersch and Louis Meintjes — had built a maximum gap of just over four minutes by the top of Bikotx-Gane. For the first time all week the lead car did not glance nervously over its shoulder at the peloton behind it. With Paul Seixas holding a 2:14 advantage on Roglič and the yellow jersey's defence simplified by the early-morning abandon of Isaac del Toro, Decathlon read the day correctly. They would cover the break, manage the gap, and let the move ride.
That decision handed Laurance his platform. The Frenchman had looked strong from the first categorised climb. He attacked twice on Barrerilla to test the composition of the breakaway and, having identified his dangermen, sat calmly in the wheels for the next fifty kilometres. Arrieta, a Spanish climber making his move in front of a home crowd, was equally patient. When Sarasola came at 28 kilometres to go, the two launched almost at the same time — Arrieta responding to a Laurance acceleration, then countering a few pedal strokes later. Over the top of the climb the pair had thirty seconds on the nine remaining riders from the break. Laurance, looking back, said later he knew immediately. "We both understood that was the race," he told ITV4's post-race show. "From there it was just about one of us guessing right at the finish."
The twenty-five kilometres to Basauri unfolded without the usual cat-and-mouse of a two-man finale. Both men worked. Arrieta took the longer pulls on the descent off Sarasola, Laurance drove the flat run-in through Etxebarri. The gap to the chase behind them grew, rather than shrank — the sign that the pair was genuinely matched, and that their collective interest in holding off Powless and the rest of the break's scraps was stronger than any individual impulse to conserve. With three kilometres to go they still had 35 seconds. With one kilometre to go the gap to the peloton had collapsed to 18 seconds as Primož Roglič's Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe hit the gas in a final GC move that would fail to change anything — but in front, it was too late for the chase.
Arrieta launched first, from 250 metres out on the Basauri ramp, trying to exploit his home-road knowledge of the narrow final left-hander. It was the wrong move. Laurance, who is 76 kilograms and one of the more powerful one-day riders on the Ineos roster, simply came past him with 80 metres to go and kept accelerating. Arrieta, who had led out the sprint but had nothing left for the uphill, faded to second by two bike lengths. Powless came home third from the chase of nine, 22 seconds back, with Vermeersch fourth and Tejada fifth. The peloton crossed the line at 42 seconds with Seixas comfortably inside the group and the yellow jersey retained without fuss.
For Laurance this is his fourth victory of 2026 and by some distance the most significant. His previous wins — the closing stage of the Tour de la Provence, two stages at Settimana Coppi e Bartali — were won on one-day and short stage-race terrain. A stage of the Itzulia Basque Country is a different order of prize. His only previous WorldTour success, at the Volta a Catalunya two years ago, was so long ago now that most of the Belgian press room had to search for the date. "This is what I came to Ineos for," he said in the mixed zone. "I do not only want to be the rider who wins the little French races in February. I want to be the rider who wins the hard ones in April."
It is also, crucially, an Ineos Grenadiers win. For a team that spent the second half of the last decade asking uncomfortable questions about its own identity — first as Team Sky, then as Ineos — 2026 has been the start of a quietly substantial turnaround. The Basauri win is Ineos's sixteenth of the season, a number that, as recently as March, nobody in the paddock was seriously expecting. Only UAE Team Emirates-XRG have more. The full revival story — how Sir Dave Brailsford's shadow has receded, how Filippo Ganna's new role as road captain has reshaped the team's tactical DNA, how Ineos have quietly stacked sixteen wins in three months — deserves an article of its own.
The stage also leaves the general classification virtually untouched. Seixas rolls into Thursday's queen stage through Galdakao still wearing the yellow, green and mountains jerseys — the same astonishing armful of silk he has held since his stage 1 time trial. His lead over Roglič is still 2:14, with Felix Gall at 2:38 and Juan Ayuso at 3:11. With the queen stage's five-climb final circuit looming, stage 3 was exactly the day Decathlon-AG2R needed: no GC drama, no teammates used up, no collective legs wasted on a day the yellow jersey did not need to take on. They handed the stage to the break. The break handed it to Laurance. And the French teenager in the maillot amarillo still leads the race by the same margin with which he started the morning.
"I am happy, the team is happy, the sponsors are happy," Laurance shrugged, dressed already in the green-and-red of the breakaway kit with an Ineos soigneur handing him a bottle of still water. "Tomorrow I go back to work for the team. Paul deserves a teammate tomorrow. Today was mine. Tomorrow belongs to Felix and to Ben." Felix Gall, standing a few metres away and listening, laughed out loud. "Bring me a good day like the one he just had, Axel." The younger Frenchman nodded back. There were worse things, he said, than being asked to do your day-job the morning after winning a Basque stage.