Giro d'Italia (st. 3)
Fern aacute;ndez, Herrada into 25-man escape heating up Giro stage three to Sestri Levante. Matthews (OGE) wins in pink; Amador takes 17th into bunch sprint
Movistar Team started showing its strength for the mountains in the 2015 Giro d’Italia as two of its riders made it into a huge escape group on stage three, a short (136km), yet demanding (3,000m vertical drop) ride from Rapallo to Sestri Levante.
Rubén Fernández and Jesús Herrada entered a 25-man group which the two Spaniards tried to split in several occassions. Rubén, taking the most efforts into a four-man move always much controlled by the riders in pursuit and the Tinkoff-led bunch, ended up dropping back and leaving responsibility to Jesús. The latter went after the wheel of Pavel Kochetkov (KAT) as the Russian attacked into the day’s main climb of Barbagelata (Cat-2), but the lack of force after no feed zones were proposed on today's route -the team cars unable to get to his group with gaps under one minute- made his chances limited. Into the final descent, a hard crash was suffered by Domenico Pozzovivo (ALM), fortunately not life-threatening but a huge scare for everyone into the Giro convoy.
Big selection into the climbs meant that neither Dayer Quintana -still recovering from his bruises after crashing on Sunday- nor Juanjo Lobato made the 75-man group, where race leader Michael Matthews (OGE) took the win. Day four should be more complicated for a ‘volata’, with again explosive efforts (150km) awaiting for the riders as the descent of Biassa (Cat-3, summit just 10k from the end) ends right before La Spezia’s finishing straight.