Team Sky saw a strong performance hampered by a series of crashes during the queen stage at the Tour of Denmark. The team were riding at the head of the pack for much of day three but saw Lars Petter Nordhaug, Alex Peters and Kanstanstsin Siutsou all crash out of the race.

With 50 kilometres to go Team Sky made sure they were up front as the pace ramped up following pressure from Tinkoff-Saxo in the wind. Despite strong positioning there was still a crash with Nordhaug and stagiaire Peters going down as the peloton encountered road furniture at high speed. Both riders went to hospital for x-rays, and despite cuts and bruises the pair suffered no fractures.

Sebastian Henao, Ben Swift, Christian Knees and Kanstantsin Siutsou still remained in a much-reduced front group. Siutsou was keen to continue and attacked with 35km to go, dragging two riders with him. Sadly the Belarusian was another to go down, falling hard ahead of a brief cobbled section. Understandably disappointed to have crashed out of a strong position, Siutsou will receive further tests after a painful fall. All three riders will be monitored by the team's medical staff.

The race blew apart further during the first ascent up the Kiddesvej climb in Vejle. Team Sky's remaining trio chased hard in the second group. Henao led the charge in 17th, 1:05 back, to hold the same position overall. Knees was hampered by a mechanical problem with 500 metres to go but still finished inside the top 20.

At the finish it was Matti Breschel (Tinkoff-Saxo) who had the strength to take the victory, leading home an all-Danish podium on the day with Rasmus Guldhammer (Cult Energy) and Alexander Kamp (ColoQuick) the next men to finish.

Lars Bak (Lotto Soudal) finished in the lead group to move into a three-second race lead ahead of Friday's double header.

"The guys are banged up. They weren't able to continue after the crashes and went to hospital," confirmed Sports Director Kurt Asle Arvesen.

"The whole team were doing a brilliant job. They followed the plan and they were up there and ready to go when the accident happened with Lars Petter and Alex. The other guys continued and Kosta felt good so he attacked with a couple of other guys. He went away but then he also crashed.

"We're racing without radios here so the other guys didn't really know he was out of the race. So they were sitting on behind. Christian, Ben and Sebastian were there in the final and before that CJ (Sutton) and Nathan (Earle) did a super job of keeping them up there. We're pretty impressed with how the team rode today, but when three guys who we'd hoped to be there in the final crashed there's not much you can do."