Other than that the race has been largely uneventful. The crowds were big but the drama short and none of the big favourites were seriously tested beyond that of the 9.8km time-trial. Tom Dumoulin won that on home soil by a fraction of a second and thus with it he took the first pink jersey, though he lost it yesterday when Kittel took his second stage win and enough collective bonus time to make good on a solid time-trial of his own to jump into pink.
Fabian Cancellara had hoped to spoil the Dutch party but had taken ill on the Thursday and had to settle for an 8th place finish 14sec behind Dumoulin. He still was clearly struggling a day later when he came in 1min 51sec down on Kittel and again on Sunday when he finished 6min 3sec back. Cancellara will hope to battle through and recover in time for the 40.5km time-trial on stage 9 from which he'll be on of the favourites for the stage win. Snatching pink for a few days is now a lost ambition.
The biggest loser of the main contenders was probably Mikel Landa of Sky who conceded 40sec to Dumoulin, or perhaps more crucially, 21sec to Vincenzo Nibali who was likely best of the rest as far as the favourites are concerned.
General classification after stage 3:
| 1. Marcel Kittel (Etixx - Quick Step) 2. Tom Dumoulin (Giant-Alpecin) 3. Andrey Amador (Movistar) 4. Tobias Ludvigsson (Giant-Alpecin) 5. Moreno Moser (Cannondale) 6. Bob Jungels (Etixx - Quick Step) |
in 9h 13' 10"
@ 9" @ 15' @ 17" @ 21" @ 22" |
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Rider of the week:
I know Dutchman won the opening stage of the Giro in front of his adoring Dutch fans to pull on the pink jersey but I can't look past two superb sprint wins by Marcel Kittel in which he beat the rest by, what looked like, a collective ten lengths and moved into pink! The German sprinter is in a different class than the rest.
