The third stage of the 73rd edition of Paris – Nice brought another sprint stage with Team Katusha’s Alexander Kristoff right in the middle of the action. Coming into the final ‘s’ curves before the finish line, Kristoff was pushed just a little wide before the line and the strong Norwegian rider ended up in 4th place for the group sprint.

"I got into a good position. On the corner I tried to go to the inside but I could see it was closing to me so I went to the outside and lost just a little speed there. I had to brake a little bit so that was a decisive moment or I would have gotten a better result. I felt much better today and felt like maybe I could win; I had the legs. But the team did a good job getting me to the front. We hope to have another chance on Friday," said team leader Alexander Kristoff.

Michael Matthews (Orica-GreenEdge) took the victory ahead of Davide Cimolai (Lampre-Merida) and Giacomo Nizzolo of Trek Factory Racing. He earned the yellow jersey in the process. He leads by 1-second to former leader Michal Kwiatkowski (Etixx – Quick Step) and BMC’s Rohan Dennis.  Kristoff will ride in the green sprint jersey on stage 4 although he currently is 2-points behind leader Matthews in that competition. 

Twenty teams and 158 riders took part in Wednesday’s stage. At 179 km, the stage started in Saint-Amand-Montrond and ended in Saint-Pourçain-sur-Sioule. The breakaway of the day included Thomas Voeckler, Philippe Gilbert and Florian Vachon who took a time advantage of more than five minutes. Team Katusha with Egor Silin helped to bring them back near the 10 km to go mark, with the exception of Voeckler who stayed away with new attackers, including Jan Bakelants, until 2 km to go. With the peloton all together, the lead-out men took their places at the front and the mass sprint followed.

Thursday’s stage 4 heads to the mountains for the first time in this year’s “Race to the Sun”. At 204 km the stage begins in Varennes-sur-Allier and ends atop the Croix de Chaubouret. There are 8 climbs on the race profile, including the uphill category one finish.