Stage 3

The road

At the start

Bakelants leads by one second

Jan Bakelants held the whole Tour de France off in Ajaccio and leads it by a single second from a queue of riders on the same time — Millar, Simon, Impey, Boasson Hagen, Gerrans, Kwiatkowski. Kittel and Cavendish are ten minutes down and glad to still be here. Today is the last of Corsica: a hundred and forty-five twisting coastal kilometres to Calvi, with the Col de Marsolino thirteen from the line.

How it was won

1. 121 km to go

   Clarke goes for the polka dots

   Simon Clarke has taken the points on the San Bastiano, the San Martino and the Côte de Porto, and with a shade over twenty kilometres left he attacks with Minard to try to keep them. He is the last survivor of the morning's break.

2. 213 km to go

   Rolland takes them anyway

   A kilometre from the top of the Col de Marsolino, Pierre Rolland — dressed head to toe in polka dots — jumps out of the thinning bunch and rides straight past Clarke to the summit points. Behind him the peloton fragments; ninety riders come over together.

3. 33 km to go

   The last move dies at three kilometres

   Rolland and Chavanel never get more than ten seconds on the plunge into Calvi, and with three kilometres left it is over. The stage is set for Peter Sagan, and everybody in the race knows it.

4. 4At the line

   Gerrans by inches

   Daryl Impey delivers a perfect lead-out and Simon Gerrans comes off it to beat Sagan by the width of a wheel. The Slovak takes the green jersey and, shown the replay afterwards, cannot hide what he thinks of it.

The result