While waiting for the road to climb some mountains, the Giro remains at the feet of Marcel Kittel. The German is too strong for anyone to threaten him with the scepter of sprinters today. More than a sprint, yesterday's encore at the finish line in Arnhem was a prodigious solo that once again annihilated the courageous who tried to challenge him. In Nijmegen on Saturday, it was Arnaud Démare and Sacha Modolo who finished one car behind.
Yesterday it was the turn of Elia Viviani and Giacomo Nizzolo and Viviani with the same result: defeated by the German who in the last hundred meters took off like a missile creating a vacuum behind him. André Greipel was also in the final scrum but the Gorilla didn't go beyond fourth place. Démare was only eighth on a bad day for the French who lost 38-year-old Christophe Péraud through a fall, who after his second place in last year's Tour had come to race the Giro for the first time, in his last competitive season, with some well-founded hope of classification.
As was planned, Kittel, already in the red jersey as leader of the points standings, with yesterday's second bonus of 10” also conquered the pink jersey by slipping it off the Dutchman Tom Dumoulin. An encore that follows the identical one obtained by the German sprinter in the first two Irish stages of the 2014 Giro. Then the Giro returned from Dublin to Italy in Puglia, just in time for Kittel to announce his sensational withdrawal in Bari due to a sudden fever attack.
The retro-thoughts that prompted such a decision were immediate. Today Kittel will land in the pink jersey with the whole caravan of the Giro in Calabria, ready to leave again tomorrow for the fourth stage from Catanzaro to Praia a Mare. There shouldn't be any twists and turns. The German, a physicist like Marcantonio, leaves Holland in full health and with the intention of winning the Giro in Italy as well. It would be the first time, because so far Kittel has won four stages all abroad.
In the standings, apart from the change of pink jersey between Dumoulin and Kittel, the gaps between the best remained unchanged and were not surprised by the dangerous fans created by the wind which broke the group into various parts. Nibali, Valverde, Landa and Dumoulin were careful to stay in the lead. Among those missing in the rear was an Italian with an important past, Damiano Cunego, who arrived with one of the stragglers over 6 minutes behind the leaders, which also included Fabian Cancellara. Still further back Primoz Roglic, who thus fell to the bottom of the standings after coming close to the pink jersey in the initial time trial in Appeldoorn, beaten by a hundredth of a second by Dumoulin.
