Very similar stage to the first one, with it being mainly flat with some KOM points and Sprint primes on the way. There is another sprint prime very close to the finish which was saw yesterday almost created some time gaps!
Pendletons fine South African sprinter Jaan Van Heerden holds the yellow jersey and will be difficult to move out of it before the TT on stage 4. There the British squad have Wiggins and Millar waiting in the wings, but will they be called in to help control things today?
There were not many attacks yesterday and today hardly anybody wanted to try, it was little surprising with the rider who did launch the solo move however...
Its Sylvian Calzati (El-Al)
So the Frenchman will take all three mountain primes today. As ever it is a battle for the minor placings between the usual suspects from yesterday. At the first its...
2nd. Grabovski (Intesa) over 3rd. Elizen (HR)
Stef Clement would take 2nd over Elizen who was third at the second prime and finally Grabovski took second at the last prime over Clement in third there.
At each the current KOM Miles Olman of Bimbo tried to sprint for them, but just didn't have any power hardly surprising after yesterdays efforts. Nethertheless he will still hold a comfortable 3 point lead over Calzati, with Grabovski and Elizen now 5 points back from him. The sprints would also all be 'won' by Calzati behind that...
Greenie takes a second in a sprint
Sammy Dumoulin was definately the most keen, taking second on the first two sprints with Borrajo (Unicredit) 3rd at the first and Seb Chavenal taking 3rd and the 2nd sprint. This meant that Sammy had closed the gap on Van Heerden to just 5 points on the points competition and was now 12 seconds behind the Pendletons man on GC.
Meanwhile back to the racing and it was definitely Pendletons in charge of the peleton today. With 35 to go they had Calzati down to just a two minute lead. He takes a drink thoughtfully...
Long day for Calzati he has drunk up a lot of KOM points!
In the run up to the last sprint prime, Sylv Chavenel moves out of the peleton to join his pal at El-AL.
Time bonus hope perhaps?
However this crafty move is caught quickly with 20km to go, I am afraid the sprinters teams are way too hungry to allow a GC man to take time bonuses. Van Heerden though this time is aware to the Dumoulin threat. He cannot stop the Pokerstars dynamo taking the 3rd sprint prime win though!
Plenty of teams are getting used to seeing this view, now Jaan Van Heerden.
Jaan Van Heerden would at least get second here, meaning he still had a 10 second GC lead and 3 point points jersey lead. Seb Chavenal got third at this one. Birce Fiellu and Greg Rast went back to help an absolutely knackered Calzati as he was spat out the back of the peleton. Meanwhile the focus at the front was on the final sprint.
long sprint train to the left.
The pokerstars sprint prime domination had led to a ridiculously long train behind them, on the left there we have Holloway, Dumoulin, GC hope Ignatiev (wiggle), Lorenzetto (Intesa), Vantomme (HR), Van Heerden (Pendletons), Goss (Bacardi), Kennaugh (100& Me) and Seb Chavenel (Bimbo Nutella).
It was all a bit silly as Holloway was very tired after working with Dumoilin for the primes all day! It was left too see whether there was anybody in the pace snake who could take advantage...
Pendletons and Highroad have some riders in a good place.
Thats Vorganov for Pendletons and Vormeltfoort for Highroad...not sprint names that you might recognize. There is a good reason for that as is soon evidenced by Vorganov fading as they approach the km banner.
No double for Pendletons.
Could this be a rare Highroad victory? An El-Al rider begins to sneak through the middle...
Those rotters at El - Al look to steal glory
There are spinters beginning to close Dumoulin is green jersey rider in second rank for example. But The El-Al man is Lagutin and he has just about enough to hold off a fast finishing Ignatiev on the left hand side and Dumoulin just behind.
Surprise sprint win for El-Al
Good time bonus for Ignatiev that though and now Dumoulin is tantalisingly close to the yellow jersey. He does grab a decent lead in the points comp though as Van Heerden could only finish 38th!
