Cavendish wins stage 3 at the Tour de France in photo finish
Mark Cavendish (Dimension Data) took his 28th victory in Tour de France after a photo finish win ahed of André Greipel (Lotto Soudal) in Angers.
With a relatively quiet spring season, Cavendish again flew under the radar for this year’s Tour de France and all the pre-race hype was about Kittel and Greipel. However, the Brit proved that he still has it when he upset the two Germans in the first sprint stage and today he proved that he is fully back to his best by taking his second win.
In the first stage, he held off Kittel in a direct duel and today it was Greipel who came up short in the battle for victory. Again Cavendish had done everything right to be on the right wheel in the finale. Greipel was dropped off in the perfect position and started his sprint from the front but Cavendish was right behind and narrowly edged him out in a photo finish. In fact, it was so close that no one could call the winner and Greipel had even raised his arm in celebration, briefly believing that he had beaten his arch-rival.
It was a very strange stage ridden at a very low speed with just lone escapee Armindo Fonseca (Fortuneo-Vital Concept) in the front. A rather bizarre race where no one was chasing finally came to life when Thomas Voeckler (Direct Energie) bridged across to Fonseca but the pair was brought back with 8km to go.
Peter Sagan retained his lead with an 8-second advantage over Julian Alaphilippe. There should be another chance to sprint for him in tomorrow’s fourth stage which is the longest of the race. After a flat start, the terrain gets slightly lumpier in the finale where there’s a category 4 climb with 55.5km to go. However, the real challenge is the uphill sprint as the final 500m average around 5%.
Tour de France 2016 – stage 3 results (Granville – Angers):
| 1 | Mark Cavendish (Dimension Data) |
5:59:54 |
| 2 | André Greipel (Lotto Soudal) |
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| 3 | Bryan Coquard (Direct Energie) |
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| 4 | Peter Sagan (Tinkoff) |
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| 5 | Edward Theuns (Trek-Segafredo) |
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| 6 | Sondre Holst Enger (IAM) |
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| 7 | Marcel Kittel (Etixx – Quick-Step) |
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| 8 | Christophe Laporte (Cofidis) |
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| 9 | Daniel Mclay (Fortuneo – Vital Concept) |
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| 10 | Dylan Groenewegen (LottoNl-Jumbo) |
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General classification after stage 3:
| 1 | Peter Sagan (Tinkoff) |
14:34:36 |
| 2 | Julian Alaphilippe (Etixx – Quick-Step) |
+08” |
| 3 | Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) |
+10” |
| 4 | Christopher Froome (Sky) |
+14” |
| 5 | Warren Barguil (Giant-Alpecin) |
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| 6 | Nairo Quintana (Movistar) |
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| 7 | Roman Kreuziger (Tinkoff) |
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| 8 | Tony Gallopin (Lotto Soudal) |
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| 9 | Fabio Aru (Astana) |
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| 10 | Daniel Martin (Etixx – Quick-Step) |
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