One year ago Lawson Craddock finished in the top at the Tour of California and yesterday he again proved that he is an exceptional stage racing talent. Now riding in Giant-Shimano coulours, he finished third in the queen stage of the Californian race and moved into fourth overall.

Lawson Craddock has climbed to third place on the finishing climb of Stage 3 of the Amgen Tour of California today, and jumping up the general classification to fourth.

Craddock looked extremely comfortable as the race leader Bradley Wiggins (Sky) picked up the pace in the closing kilometres of the finishing climb and held strong when the attacks came on the steepest section in the last few hundred metres. Already wearing the jersey of best young rider, Craddock comforts his lead in this competition and moves up from 12th to fourth overall heading into tomorrow’s fourth stage.

The stage got underway with one rider less than planned for Team Giant-Shimano as South African Reinardt Janse van Rensberg did not start the stage due to having to fly home for personal reasons. With Chad Haga in 10th overall and Craddock just behind in 12th, together with Daan Olivier also well placed the team had options for the tough stage that lay ahead.

The stage saw a breakaway of seven riders move clear early on before being joined by one other during the stage. These eight set about building as much advantage as possible before they hit the lower slopes of the finishing climb of Mount Diablo. This gap was around four minutes and as soon as they started climbing the gap started falling.

Haga was suffering with stomach problems and set about riding his own tempo on the climb as riders started dropping away from the front of the race. Olivier was the next rider to lose contact with just a few kilometres to race, leaving Craddock and Thomas Damuseau in the front group.

With the final escapees having been caught, the leaders hit the toughest slopes of the climb, and the front of the race splintered with riders going both off the front and back.

Craddock held firm and rode to an impressive third place, while teammate Damuseau came across the line just over a minute behind in 15th. Olivier followed this with a strong 18th place which leaves him in the same position overall.

“The plan for today was to see how the young guys could go on the final climb of the day and Lawson did a fantastic job,” said Team Giant-Shimano coach, Aike Visbeek.

“We knew that he could finish well on this stage as he was seventh up here last year but today was a really strong performance and shows what a talent the young 22-year-old is.

“Unfortunately Chad had stomach problems and dropped out of the top 10 overall but Daan climbed well, together with Thomas, and is in the top 20 overall.”