A crash with around 10km to go in today’s Giro d’Italia stage 3 saw race leader Cadel Evans (BMC Racing) caught behind a split in the front group. Despite a hard chase the World champion was unable to close the gap and by the end of the stage had conceded 46 seconds to Alexandre Vinokourov (Astana), with the controversial Kazakh taking over the race lead.
"With 10 km to go, I had done everything right, I put myself everywhere [to be safe] and was relaxed and there was no wind," said Evans after the stage. "Then, I came around a corner and the whole Sky team was on the ground. [Suddenly], guys were falling on top of me. Losing 40-some seconds to my competitors isn't something I wanted to give up."
Ironically, Evans took the maglia rosa of race leader due to stage 1 winner Bradley Wiggins (Team Sky) being caught behind a crash in similar circumstances on stage 2.
The many crashes in yesterday and today’s Giro d’Italia stages were for the most part caused by the plethora of traffic islands and other traffic calming measures. Similar incidents often occur in many of the major races on the Dutch calendar, including the Amstel Gold Race. This has caused the World champion to reflect that while cycling is an excellent form of transport in the Netherlands, the country’s infrastructure doesn’t always lend itself to racing.
"While Holland is very cycling friendly for commuters,” he said, “there's a lot of things on the road which you can't see from the peloton because they're so small and low and that adds to the problems."
While Evans lost the pink jersey at the end of today’s stage he escaped injury, unlike BMC teammate Martin Kohler and Garmin-Transitions’ Christian Vande Velde, who both broke their collarbones on stages 1 and 2 respectively. Like the rest of the peloton the Australian will travel to the north east of Italy tomorrow in advance of Wednesday’s team time trial.