Giro d'Italia: Domenico Pozzovivo crashes as Michael Matthews wins

Australia’s Michael Matthews extended his lead of the Giro d’Italia by sprinting to victory on a third stage marred by a serious crash for Domenico Pozzovivo.

Pozzovivo (Ag2r-La Mondiale) had been expected to challenge for a place on the final podium but is now out of the race after appearing to fall head-first on a downhill right-hand turn with just under 40km to go.

The 32-year-old Italian laid motionless and bloodied for several minutes and was taken to hospital by ambulance in a neck brace, but his team later confirmed in a tweet that he was “conscious and lucid”.

Matthews (Orica-GreenEdge) was the only high-profile sprinter remaining in the peloton at the end of a short but hilly day and lived up to expectation by beating Fabio Felline (Trek Factory Racing) into second place and Philippe Gilbert (BMC Racing) into third in Sestri Levante.

He picked up 10 bonus seconds for the win and now leads the general classification by six seconds over team-mate Simon Clarke, who was part of the day’s breakaway and took four bonus seconds at intermediate sprints. Simon Gerrans, also from Orica-GreenEdge, is 10 seconds back in third.

The race favourites all finished safely in the peloton, meaning Alberto Contador (Tinkoff-Saxo) remains six seconds ahead of Fabio Aru (Astana), 12 seconds in front of Rigoberto Uran (Etixx – Quick-Step)  and 20 seconds up on Richie Porte (Team Sky).

Matthews, who has now won two Giro stages in his career, said: “It’s been a dream come true so far for this Giro d’Italia this year. We planned for the team time trial win [on stage one] and this was another big goal for us.

“We reconned it last week, so we knew what was coming and we knew what to expect. From then on, it was just try and do as best as we could and we pulled it off.”

Earlier in the day, a 20-man breakaway formed and but then split apart when Pavel Kochetkov (Katusha) attacked on the final climb of the day and moved into a lone lead. He led the peloton by one minute going into the final 20km but was caught by four of his fellow escapees with 10km remaining and then by the reduced main bunch with 3.5km left.

The Giro continues on Tuesday with a 150km rolling fourth stage from Chiavari to La Spezia.

Stage three result

1 Michael Matthews (Aus) Orica-GreenEdge, 3:33:53

2 Fabio Felline (Ita) Trek Factory Racing, same time

3 Philippe Gilbert (Bel) BMC Racing, st

4 Sergey Lagutin (Rus) Katusha, st

5 Paolo Tiralongo (Ita) Astana, st

6 Luca Paolini (Ita) Katusha, st

7 Francesco Gavazzi (Ita) Southeast, st

8 Enrico Battaglin (Ita) Bardiani-CSF, st

9 Luis Leon Sanchez (Esp) Astana, st

10 Yonathan Monsalve (Col) Southeast, st

General classification

1 Michael Matthews (Aus) Orica-GreenEdge, 8:06:27

2 Simon Clarke (Aus) Orica-GreenEdge, +6sces

3 Simon Gerrans (Aus) Orica-GreenEdge, +10

4 Johan Esteban Chaves (Col) Orica-GreenEdge, same time

5 Roman Kreuziger (Cze) Tinkoff-Saxo, +17

6 Alberto Contador (Esp) Tinkoff-Saxo, st

7 Michael Rogers (Aus) Tinkoff-Saxo, st

8 Paolo Tiralongo (Ita) Astana, +23

9 Fabio Aru (Ita) Astana, st

10 Diego Rosa (Ita) Astana, st