Stage 3

The road

At the start

A minute's silence, and the last Danish day

Taylor Phinney keeps the maglia rosa by nine seconds from Geraint Thomas after Mark Cavendish took yesterday's sprint in Herning; Navardauskas sits twenty-two seconds back, with a team time trial in Verona. Before any of it the race stands still: a minute for Wouter Weylandt, his family at the line, and a minute for Jan Trøjborg, the Horsens mayor who brought the Giro here and died on his bike yesterday.

How it was won

1. 1128 km to go

   Six for the Danish roads

   Navardauskas, Hollenstein, Balloni, Keizer, Christensen and Minguez get a gap and are never allowed more than three minutes. It is enough to matter: Navardauskas starts the day twenty-two seconds off pink with a team time trial coming.

2. 236 km to go

   Christensen goes for the home crowd

   Fifty-six seconds is all that is left of the break when Mads Christensen jumps away alone to give the Danish roadside something to shout about. The rest sit up behind him; a few kilometres later, so does he.

3. 311 km to go

   Bak leads the last lap

   Onto the last of the three finishing circuits Lars Bak attacks, exactly as he did yesterday, and exactly as yesterday the bunch reel him back in — this time with eleven kilometres left. Cavendish, Goss, Renshaw, Farrar, Haedo and Demare all start looking for wheels.

4. 4At the line

   Goss wins; the road takes the pink jersey down

   Sky's train comes apart, Orica-GreenEdge take over and deliver Matt Goss to the line. Behind him Roberto Ferrari darts right, sweeps Mark Cavendish's front wheel away and puts half the sprint on the tarmac. Cavendish gets up quickly. Taylor Phinney does not — and after a spell in an ambulance the maglia rosa walks to the podium to collect his third pink jersey. Ferrari is relegated to last.

The result