JJ Haedo won the third stage of the Tirreno- Adriatico this afternoon.
Stage three was a 189km stage from Terranuova Bracciolini to Perugia and saw Daniel Sesma from the Euskatel team go on a solo break. He was three and a half minutes clear before he was caught by the peleton with thirty kilometres to go.
As the race got into Perugia whose football team once featured former Coventry City striker Jay Bothroyd, the peleton was altogether.
Mark Cavendish had been at the back of the peleton but with less than 3km to go, he was uptowards the front with the rest of the sprinters and their lead out men.
There were three roundabouts to negotiate before the finish and it was Saxo Bank who were on the front with one km to go. Cavendish lost the wheel of Mark Ranshaw and it was a four man sprint won by Saxo Bank's JJ Haedo with Tyler Farrar in the leaders jersey second and Daniel Oss third.
Stage Four tomorrow is 240km long and is from Narni to Chieti.
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Bradley Wiggins was second in the sixth stage of the Paris Nice Classic this afternoon.
Today saw a 27km individual time trial close to Aix en Province and saw last man on the road, Lampre's Oleksandr Kvachuk start first.
AG2R's Christophe Riblon posted the fasted time for a while until Team Sky's Geraint Thomas smashed that to finish in a time of 35.25.
Then Vacansoleil's Lieuwe Westra beat that time by a minute and three seconds.
Westra's average speed of 47.1km was proving hard to beat but not to the British Time Trial Champion of Bradley Wiggins (pictured below), who went through in 33.44 which was 37 seconds faster than Westra's time and nine seconds quicker than Richie Porte's.
Tony Martin (pictured below) had been a lot of pundit's favourite for this time trial and he went through twenty seconds quicker than Wiggins in 33.24 to take the victory.
Martin now leads the race ahead of Andreas Kloddin and Bradley Wiggins.
It was a good course for me, not too technical and with really good roads, and I knew I could do well on it," Martin said to HTC Press Office after the stage. "I started out full gas, saw I had a good advantage at the time check, and then tried to keep everything under control on the final climb."
"Yesterday [Thursday] had been a hard ride through the mountains, and I didn't keep anything back for today, so it was tough going both days. There were no particular tactics, just going all out."
Martin says he is optimistic about his chances in the two mountainous stages to come.
"I'm confident I'll take the leader's jersey all the way to Nice, but in a race as nervous as this one you can never be too certain of anything."
"It is a race I like, though two years ago I took the King of the Mountain's jersey here, and I've always thought I could maybe win it some time. I've got a good chance."
"We could see from the start of today's stage Tony was going really strong and he kept it up right the way through," commented HTC-Highroad sports director Jan Schaffrath, "We weren't using time references, Tony had checked out the course around midday and he knew what he had to face."
"He went full gas to the top of the one climb and then rode within himself to the finish."
Pictures copyright of Covsupport News Service. Credit CNS/KM