Third and last stage in Denmark for the Giro d'Italia 2012 today, with start and finish in Horsens, completely flat. Not really surprising in that case that the stage finished in a sprint. 6 riders animated the stage but they've been taken back at a little bit over twenty kilometers from the finish. A new chaotic sprint gave Matthew Goss as the winner of this 3rd stage!

The summary of the 3rd stage of the Giro d'Italia 2012

The start of the stage today in Horsens in Denmark was marked with the commemoration of the tragical death of Wouter Weylandt in the 3rd stage of the Giro d'Italia last year. Winner of the 3rd stage in the Tour of Italy in 2010, victim of a very bad crash in the 3rd stage in 2011, this homage to the Belgian rider will from now on mark the start of the 3rd stage of the Italian Grand Tour.
This morning, during the one minute of silence, the thought also went out to the mayor of Horsens, Jan Trøjborg, who died during a bike ride this weekend.

The race than started quite early this morning, due to the transfer to Italy at the end of the afternoon, with an attack of 6 riders among whom we found Ramunas Navardauskas (Garmin-Barracuda) who already set a very good time in the initial time trial of the Tour of Italy 2012, but also Alfredo Balloni (Farnese Vini-Selle Italia) who was already in the breakaway in yesterday's stage and who wore the blue jersey as the leader of the King of the Mountains classification, the Dutch rider Martijn Keizer (Vacansoleil-DCM Pro Cycling Team), the local rider for this stage, Mads Christensen (Saxo Bank), Miguel Minguez (Euskaltel-Euskadi) and Reto Hollenstein (Team NetApp).
Their gap was quite stable all along the day at 3 minutes to 3'30" since the sprinters teams didn't want to give them too much margin, thinking about a possible bunch sprint at the finish in Horsens.

Talking about a sprint, the intermediate sprint of the stage in Hovedgard was won by Martijn Keizer, ahead of Navardauskas and Minguez. Not really surprisingly, it was another rider in the breakaway, Alfredo Balloni, who arrived first on top of the only climb of the day in Ever Bavnehøj (see all details about the Tour of Italy 2012 race route on Google Maps for more information) and who thus took some more points to get the blue jersey even tighter on his shoulders.

In the last 50 kilometers of the stage, while approaching the 3 laps on the 14.3 kilometer long circuit, the gap of the 6 leading riders finally started to drop seriously, down to only 35 seconds at about thirty kilometers from the finish, when Mads Christensen decided to continue alone to try to keep away from the big arms of the peloton. When his former breakaway mates were taken back, the peloton was still hungry for more however and at 24 kilometers from the finis, the Danish rider was also taken back.

At 18 kilometers from the finish, his compatriot Lars Bak (Lotto-Belisol) did the same thing as yesterday, attempting a solo breakaway while approaching the finish but 7 kilometers further his solo adventure again ended and it was thus time for the sprinters teams (almost all of the teams in the Giro!) to find their spot at the front of the peloton.

It all seemed to be a remake of yesterday's finish (without the crash in the last turn of course) since the train of the men in black for Team Sky was comfortably installed at the head of the peloton for Mark Cavendish. At 2.5 kilometers from the finish, the World Champion however lost the wheel of Geraint Thomas and the train thus got so disorganised that Cavendish didn't manage to redo the show he did yesterday.

The train of the Orica-GreenEDGE team took the best of this by delivering Matthew Goss first on the finish line. This 3rd stage was thus the first victory in the new jersey of the Australian team which found in Orica its new name sponsor for the upcoming 3 years.
In the battle for the places in the sprint the Italian rider Roberto Ferrari (Androni-Giocattoli) cut the way for Mark Cavendish who thus crashed, taking with him in the crash the pink jersey, Taylor Phinney who already had bad luck in the last kilometers of the stage yesterday. Phinney ended with an important injury on his foot but managed to get over the finish line and thus got the same time as Goss (since it happened in the last 3 kilometers). It was thus stumbling that the rider from Boulder in the United States got up the podium to receive his third pink jersey. Cavendish crashed heavily on his shoulder and got over the finish line walking with his bike at the hand. Ferrari was pushed back to the end of the classification by the commissaires because of his irregular sprint.

As usual you can find the summary video of the 3rd stage with this sprint and the crash in this race's page in the interactive UCI cycling calendar of this site.

The classifications of the Giro d'Italia 2012 after the 3rd stage

The classification of stage 3/ Horsens > Horsens of the Tour of Italy 2012

Here's the top 10 for this 3rd stage of the Giro d'Italia 2012:

1/ Matthew Goss (Orica-GreenEDGE) - 4h20'53"
2/ Juan José Haedo (Saxo Bank)
3/ Tyler Farrar (Garmin-Barracuda)
4/ Arnaud Démare (FDJ-BigMat)
5/ Mark Renshaw (Rabobank)
6/ Thor Hushovd (BMC Racing Team)
7/ Alexander Kristoff (Katusha Team)
8/ Romain Feillu (Vacansoleil-DCM Pro Cycling Team)
9/ Fumiyuki Beppu (Orica-GreenEDGE)
10/ Andrea Guardini (Farnese Vini-Selle Italia)

The general classification of the Giro d'Italia 2012 after the 3th stage

At the dawn of the first rest day, the general classification doesn't change much, with the following top 5. Today, only Ramunas Navardauskas got up to the 5th place, by taking the bonus seconds at the intermediate sprint. This could however change a bit more after the team time trial on Wednesday!

1/ Taylor Phinney (BMC Racing Team) - 9h24'31"
2/ Geraint Thomas (Team Sky) - +0'09"
3/ Alex Rasmussen (Garmin-Barracuda) - +0'13"
4/ Manuele Boaro (Saxo Bank) - +0'15"
5/ Ramunas Navardauskas (Garmin-Barracuda) - +0'18"

Points classification

With his stage victory today, Matthew Goss gets at the first place in the points classification (the Australian rider will thus wear the red jersey on Wednesday) of which the top 5 is as follows:

1/ Matthew Goss (Orica-GreenEDGE) - 45 points
2/ Tyler Farrar (Garmin-Barracuda) - 30 points
3/ Mark Cavendish (Team Sky) - 28 points
4/ Geraint Thomas (Team Sky) - 26 points
5/ Taylor Phinney (BMC Racing Team) - 25 points

King of the Mountains classification

By getting on top first on the only climb of the day, Alfredo Balloni keeps his blue leaders jersey of the King of the Mountains classification. The top 5 of this classification (which also is the full classification since for now only 5 riders took points so far) is as follows:

1/ Alfredo Balloni (Farnese Vini-Selle Italia) - 6 points
2/ Ramunas Navardauskas (Garmin-Barracuda) - 2 points
3/ Miguel Angel Rubiano (Androni-Giocattoli) - 2 points
4/ Olivier Kaisen (Lotto-Belisol) - 1 point
5/ Miguel Minguez (Euskaltel-Euskadi) - 1 point

Best young rider classification

Not surprisingly, Taylor Phinney not only wears the pink jersey but is also the leader of the best young riders classification after the 3rd stage of the Giro d'Italia 2012. The jersey will however be worn by Manuele Boaro (photo) who's second so far in this classification:

1/ Taylor Phinney (BMC Racing Team) - 9h24'31"
2/ Manuele Boaro (Saxo Bank) - +0'15"
3/ Ramunas Navardauskas (Garmin-Barracuda) - +0'18"
4/ Jesse Sergent (Radioshack-Nissan) - +0'26"
5/ Nelson Oliveira (Radioshack-Nissan) - +0'27"

Tomorrow's stage

Tomorrow ... there will not be a new stage in the Giro d'Italia 2012. Indeed, with tonight's transfer to Verona in Italy, it's normal that tomorrow will be the first rest day, even though that means this comes quite early in the 3 weeks of racing.

The day after tomorrow the riders of the Tour of Italy 2012 will do a team time trial, on a 33.2 kilometers race route with Verona as its start and finish and on relatively flat roads (there's a positive height difference of about one hundred meters, which will be climbed in about 3 kilometers). If you'd like to know all details about the race route of this stage and of all other stages to come, check out the article The Giro d'Italia 2012 race route on Google Maps/Google Earth, the profiles and the time- and route schedule.

Unless something strange happens, there will still be 198 riders at the start of the 4th stage in Verona in Italy on Wednesday!

door Thomas Vergouwen
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this publication is published in: Giro d Italia | Giro d'Italia 2012

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