Marianne Vos gets revenge on Stage 3 at Giro Donne with 31st win, Elisa Balsamo keeps pink

Updated 02/07/2022 at 14:38 GMT

The Dutchwoman, widely considered the greatest of all time, produced an outstanding sprint to soar to victory on Stage 3 at Giro Donne. It saw her close the gap on the pink jersey, currently held by Elisa Balsamo, to six seconds ahead of Sunday’s rest day. The race resumes on Monday on the Italian mainland, with pre-race favourite Annemiek van Vleuten poised to make her move in the mountains.

‘Incredible!’ – Vos grabs another sprint win on Stage 3 at Giro Donne

Marianne Vos (Jumbo-Visma) avenged her defeat on Friday by taking a fine sprint victory on Stage 3 at the Giro Donne.

The Dutchwoman was pipped on the line on Stage 2 by Elisa Balsamo (Trek-Segafredo) after launching her sprint early, but she backed herself from distance again a day later and was rewarded with her 31st stage win at the race.

Charlotte Kool (Team DSM) raced through for second as Balsamo, in the leader’s pink jersey, sat up in the closing metres. Balsamo still leads the general classification, with Vos closing to within six seconds of the Italian.

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The day got off to a largely uneventful start as the peloton rolled out of Caka Gonone to be greeted with an opening 21.3km of downhill roads hugging the Sardinian coast.

The prospect of strong crosswinds threw up the possibility of a chaotic stage but they never materialised and the peloton let a breakaway of three riders go.

Asia Zontone (Isolmant-Premac-Vittoria), Alice Palazzi (Top Girls Fassa Bortolo) and Marketa Hajkova (Bepink) were the trio up the road. They managed to create a gap of 50 seconds to a chasing group of seven riders behind with the peloton just over three minutes further back with 50km to go.

The stage's one and only intermediate sprint came 41km out from the finish line with the three up the road all competing for the three bonus seconds on offer. It was Zontone who went first and the Italian held on to roll through ahead of Hajkova and Palazzi.

Following the intermediate sprint, the peloton started to gradually turn up the heat. Trek-Segafedo hit the front and started to pace for maglia rosa holder Balsamo with 25km to go.

The chasers were absorbed by the peloton with 15km remaining, with the breakaway now nearly in sight for the ‘gruppo’.

In what was nearly a carbon copy of Stage 2, the breakaway were eventually caught just after 10km to go, with the teams starting to think about a sprint finish and where to position their lead-out trains.

The closing kilometres were a chaotic and convoluted affair with sprinters losing the tail of their trains - most notably Emma Norsgaard (Movistar), who did not follow her team-mates as they paced out front.

Norsgaard would eventually catch her team as the pack passed under the Flamme Rouge but it would be the same trio that took Friday's podium spots that would compete for the stage victory again.

Vos went early, forcing Balsamo and Kool to follow but despite a throw at the line from the latter, Vos hung on to claim her 31st Giro Donne victory with Balsamo sitting up and accepting defeat five metres from the line.

Balsamo holds on to the lead of the general classification as the peloton enjoy a rest day on Sunday ahead of the race moving to the Italian mainland.