Stage 3: Always the Bridesmaid

Stage 3 from Ajaccio to Calvi is in the books.  Described as hilly, never-flat, and "driving it has left us terribly queasy" (by Procycling magazine), the hills didn't prove large enough to split the peloton, but did once again prove big enough to drop Cav, Greipel, and Kittel.  Leaving, for the second day in a row, the ideal setup for Peter Sagan.  And for the second day in a row, he narrowly (and I mean narrowly) missed out on the win and took 2nd place.

This tour is not lacking for excitement

Edging him out was the seasoned Australian rider Simon Gerrans.  The Orica-Greenedge rider had much better luck at the finish line than his team bus did (HEYO!).  And no, I didn't even have him picked out in my way too long rider summary.  He's not exactly a stranger to victories, having won a stage in the Tour before, wore the Australian National Championship jersey last year, and has 3 other victories this year.  Still, if you knew it was him and Sagan left to sprint it out, not many people would pick Gerrans.  Congrats, Simon!

Sprint Storyline
This also happens to put Sagan in to the Green jersey, almost 50 points over Cavendish.  After tomorrow's TTT, 3 pretty straight forward sprint stages follow, we should have a pretty good idea of how the sprint classification might fall out in 4 days.  Also I just noticed Sagan's official pic on the letour.fr site... it's amazing

How you doin?

Mountains Storyline
A strong attack by Pierre Roland up the Col de Marsolino gave him 5 more points and a stranglehold on the Polka Dot!  Just kidding, we've barely touched mountains, but he'll get to wear that until stage 7 at least.

Young Rider Storyline
No change as Michal Kwiatkowski gets to wear the White another day.  Of the riders tied in time with him, I see Tejay's BMC squad or Talansky's Garmin-Sharp with the best TT teams and a chance to remove it from his shoulders.

GC Storyline
Bakelants keeps the Yellow, but with so many people (including all the big-time GC players) still at the same time (+1 s), and RadioShack-Leopard not having the strongest TTT, I suspect he loses it tomorrow (despite what I said yesterday).

Parting Thoughts: @thejensie is easily the most entertaining pro cyclist on Twitter, sorry @taylorphinney you're a close second.