Peter Sagan won the third stage of the Tour De France this afternoon.
This was the day that the race left Belgium and made its way over the border into France. The race departed Orchies,some twenty kilometres from yesterday's finish at Tournai and set off on a stage of 197km to Boulogne Sur Mer, close to the Channel Tunnel.
Saxo Bank's Michael Morkov (Saxo Bank) was in the first break of the day which escaped with 6kms gone along with Bernaudeau (Europcar), Grivko (Astana), Moreno (Euskaltel) and Minard (AG2R).
A crash after a right turn at Aire Sur La Lys in the Pas De Calais with 114kms to go, saw a number of riders go down.
The gap was around four minutes as they headed through the feed station at Therouane.
The intermediate sprint came at Senleques and saw twenty points for Sebastian Minard ahead of Bernaudeau and Morkov. Mark Cavendish who had a fine win yesterday, won the peloton sprint to take the best of the remaining points on offer.
Then we came to the Cote de L'Eperche category four climb, the first of six today, which Markov took to add another points to his King Of The Mountains tally.
On the D140 with just over 51kms to go, there was a big crash taking down Tyler Farrar and Team Sky's Kanstanstin Sivtisov, who needed medical attention. Unfortunately., his leg was broken and he became the first rider to abandon the race.
Morkov took the next climb at the Cote de Mount Vialette. Then there was another big crash with Simon Gerrans down as was Tyler Farrar and Jonny Hoogerland and JJ Rojas of Movistar who abandoned with a broken collarbone.
Climb three came at the Cote de Herquelingue with sixteen kilometres to go. Grivko and Morkov got away from the others as the peloton closed the gap down to 45 seconds just before they left the D1901 and went onto a country lane.
Morkov again took the point ahead of Grivko as Dan Martin led the peloton which mopped up the other escapers.
Sylvain Chavanel shot away with 5.3kms to go, trying to get the yellow jersey. Up the final hill, Chavanel was caught , there was a crash, a rider went off the course but Peter Sagan came up to win in a time of 4.42.58 ahead of Boason Hagen, Peter Velits and race leader Fabian Cancellera.
Picture copyright of ASO
Birthday boy Nicholas Roche was seventh. Bradley Wiggins was 53rd, some 48 seconds back, Chris Froome was 73rd, Danny Martin was 105th, Mark Cavendish was 151st, Steve Cummings was 166th, David Millar 171st.
In the General Classification , Fabian Cancellera still leads some seven seconds ahead of Bradley Wiggins. Nicholas Rochje is 20th, Chris Froome is 51st, Danny Martin is 87th, Mark Cavendish is 130th, Steve Cummings 153rd and David Millar 159th.
Peter Sagan has the points jersey, Michael Morkov the Mountains classification and Liquigas the team classification.