Peter Sagan wins crash-marred sprint on stage 3 of the Tirreno-Adriatico

Peter Sagan (Bora-hansgrohe) has won the third stage of the Tirreno-Adriatico in a crash-marred sprint. The world champion outsprinted Elia Viviani (Team Sky) and Jurgen Roelandts (Lotto Soudal). In the general classification, Rohan Dennis (BMC) takes the leader’s jersey from teammate Greg Van Avermaet.

A long descent eased riders into the day’s racing – with the parcours pointing downward for most of the first 40km of the stage, before a flat run in to the first climb. With the easy part over, it was undulating for the remainder of the 204km stage, with two categorised climbs to cross before the ride to the finish in Montaldo di Castro. The flat finale was earmarked for the fast men, but a kick at the finish still had the potential to trouble the out and out sprinters.

With the expected bunch sprint finish, the teams of the fast men were more relaxed when the break went up the road early on in the day. With some climbs before the run in to the finish, there was plenty of time to make the catch and lay claim to the stage win – the gap rising to more than three minutes and holding steady for much of the stage. With the efforts of the climbs kicking in however, the break started to fade – the day’s intermediate sprint points already mopped up, it was unlikely the escape was going to last until the end.

With 25km remaining the gap had shrunk to just 15 seconds, the. Just before the 15km mark, the catch was well and truly made, with the chasing peloton reaching incredible speeds as the sprint teams worked to deliver their rider to the line. Throughout the finale, it was clear that the World Champion, Peter Sagan, was in complete control, his teammates took charge of the peloton and driving the pace to a speed only the Slovak could maintain. Blasting past the remainder of the field, there was no doubting who was going to take the win today.

“I’d like to thank my teammates for their great job today! We are all very happy with this victory”, said Sagan. “Bora-hansgrohe is the best team! Today was a windy day and everybody was afraid of the wind in the last 50km, but in tht end, nothing happened. I imagine the peloton reached the finish without legs, but the positive aspect was that in the last 2km there was a bit of crosswind, so a lot of riders lined up, and that made positioning much easier. However, as I said before, this season has just started and I hope this isn’t my last victory.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mM5Td59JKU

Tirreno-Adriatico 2017 – stage 3 results (Monterotondo Marittimo – Montalto di Castro):

General classification after stage 3: