With Marcel Kittel licking his wounds from Thursday's crash, Giant-Shimano decided to focus on Simon Geschke in yesterday's uphill sprint in Tirreno-Adriatico. The German did well to finish 8th but the team had expected the finish to be a bit harder.

Simon Geschke came across the line in eighth place after a testing finish on stage 3 of Tirreno-Adriatico yesterday.

The stage was marked as a sprinters race however the high speeds and twisting streets in the last few kilometres and ramp up to the finish put paid to most of the main sprinters hopes.

Simon Geschke stayed out of trouble in the run in, negotiating the dangerous finish and sprinted to another strong top-10 positioning after similar performances at Strade Bianche and Roma Maxima at the weekend.

The race was run off in a much similar vein as yesterday, with a break going from very early on and building up a healthy advantage, taking the sprint and mountain points, before being reeled back in the closing stages.

Five riders made up the front group and they were eventually caught with 6km to go. From here it was full gas to the line with the peloton lined out making it difficult to manoeuvre.

The final kilometres into Arezzo were on narrow town roads , enclosed by buildings either side and it made for a tense, tricky finish as the peloton weaved its way under the red kite and to the short ramp up to the line.

Sagan proved the fastest from the front riders while most of the sprinters came across the line further back in the main body of the peloton.

Third place finisher on the stage, Michel Kwiatkowski (OPQS) moves into the race lead as the race heads to the hills today.

Eighth pace finisher Simon said: “Most of the stage was pretty steady today and we didn’t have to control the race. But then the last 50km was like racing a classic with lots of corners and fighting for position.

“At the end it was chaos and I think I got a bit lucky with my positioning. The guys did a good job bringing me up but we made a few mistakes and it could have been better. I think I came round the final corner in eighth and finished eighth, I just ran out of power.”

Coach, Aike Visbeek said: “We went into today with two plans as the finish was meant to be tough today – one plan to go for Marcel and the other for Simon. On the finishing laps we chose to ride for Simon as he was feeling really good and it was quite tough but then the finish itself didn’t turn out to be as hard as expected.

“The guys did a good job getting Simon up there towards the end of the fast and technical finish, but he was isolated in the last kilometre. He did a good sprint but there were a few too many sprinters left.

“Marcel is feeling good after his crash yesterday and there will be another opportunity for him later in the race. Tomorrow though we hit the mountains and we will try and get in the break and see what we can do.”

You can read our preview of stage 4 here.