The third stage of the Giro d’Italia was won by Michael Matthews. After a short stage the maglia rosa beat Fabio Felline and Philippe Gilbert in a sprint of a reduced peloton. GC riders Jurgen Van den Broeck and Maxime Monfort crossed the finish line in this first group, without any problems. The Giro caravan was startled by a crash of Domenico Pozzovivo. The Italian of AG2R lay on the ground and didn’t move. According to the first reports his condition is stable.

In the beginning of the stage numerous riders attacked. Because of the many hills ten riders were left on the last top at 43 kilometres from the end, Adam Hansen of Lotto Soudal was one of them. Kochetkov of Katusha jumped away; Hansen, Clarke and Paterski could bridge, but the peloton wasn’t far behind and caught them all with five kilometres to go.

“It was a painful birthday," Hansen said. "Before the stage I had decided to keep an eye on Simon Clarke of Orica-GreenEdge. Because of the nature of the course I had expected a lot of riders would ride aggressively and because Orica had several riders in the same time in GC I thought they would let him attack, which did happen. In the beginning there were many attacks, more than 30 riders escaped, but the more kilometres we covered, the more riders were dropped.

“If this stage would have taken place in the third week the escapees would have had more chance of success, but now too many riders are still close to each other in GC. Because Tinkoff-Saxo had controlled the gap, Orica wanted to aim for the stage win with Matthews, which happened. After the descent of the last climb we were working well together to catch leader Kochetkov and thanks to an acceleration I bridged together with Clarke and Paterski. But the peloton was close. I’m here to help the team’s leaders and to try to win in the stages in which that’s possible. So I hope there will be other opportunities.”