Stage 3

The road

At the start

Hushovd in yellow, and a bridge

Thor Hushovd rolls out of Olonne-sur-Mer in the maillot jaune, taken off Gilbert in the team time trial by forty-seven hundredths of a second from Cadel Evans, with his teammate David Millar level on time behind him. Today runs north into Brittany for the sprinters, and the only categorised obstacle is the bridge over the Loire at Saint-Nazaire — high, exposed, and open to whatever the Atlantic decides to send.

How it was won

1. 190 km to go

   FDJ raid the sprint again

   Mickaël Delage jumps from the back of the escape at Saint-Hilaire-de-Chaléons and takes the twenty points exactly as his teammate Roy did on Saturday. Behind, Gilbert opens the sprint for sixth and Hushovd and Cavendish lean on each other, shoulder to shoulder, for his wheel.

2. 254 km to go

   The bridge into Brittany

   A strong westerly catches the peloton on the exposed span over the Loire and tears it in half. Most of the favourites are in the front part of it; Ivan Basso, Sylvain Chavanel and Ben Swift are not.

3. 39 km to go

   Seventy kilometres an hour

   Delage and Gutiérrez give everything and it makes no difference. A string of Katusha riders brings the bunch past them at almost 70kph with nine kilometres to run.

4. 4At the line

   Farrar's first

   HTC line it out for Cavendish and Garmin-Cervélo take it off them anyway: Tyler Farrar comes through for the first Tour de France stage win of his career, ahead of Romain Feillu and José Joaquín Rojas. The team already has the yellow jersey.

The result