Boonen closes gap on leaders with stage three win

QUICKSTEP'S defending champion Tom Boonen came out on top of a last-gasp sprint finish to win the third stage of the Tour of Qatar between Dukhan and Mesaieed on Wednesday.

CLOSING IN: Defending champion Tom Boonen closes in on leaders Mol and Steurs with his 16th career Tour of Qatar stage win (Getty Images)

The Belgian, who won in 2006, as well as the past two seasons, held off the bunch in the last 200m of the 136.5km stage to finish ahead of Cervelo TestTeam's Heinrich Haussler and Saxo Bank's Baden Cooke and claim his 16th career Tour of Qatar stage win.

A crash just behind the front-runners disrupted the finish for some but Wouter Mol and Geert Steurs, who finished nearly two minutes clear in the second stage, escaped the melee to remain in first and second in the general classification with Boonen up to third.

Milram's Gerald Ciolek was the biggest casualty from the pile-up and is thought to have followed Team Sky's Kurt-Asle Arvesen injury on Monday and broken his collarbone in the incident.

On one of the flattest routes of the Tour, nobody looked set to break clear of the peloton and the lead changed hands a number of times as riders from Milram, Saxo Bank, HTC-Columbia swapped places at the front.

But as Cervelo looked set to put Heinrich Haussler in control of the sprint, Boonen raced to the front unassisted and powered home.

Russell Downing was Team Sky's top finisher in 18th while USA's Taylor Phinney, who rides for Trek Livestrong U23 - a feeder to Lance Armstrong's Team Radioshack - came seventh.

Mol leads the general classification on 6:42.30 hours with Steurs nine seconds behind in second and Boonen 1.55 minutes back in third.

Wednesday's fourth stage is 146.5km between The Pearl and Al Khor Corniche.