Giro d’Italia stage 3 finish line quotes

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Michael Matthews (Orica-GreenEdge) secured himself another day in the pink jersey after taking victory in what was a challenging day for the peloton. The final climb of Barbagelata broke the main group to bits but it was the crash of Domenico Pozzovivo (AG2R-La Mondiale) that had everyone worried.

Following the stage much of the conversation was about the Italian’s condition with race winner Matthews dedicating his victory to Pozzovivo.

Beginning with the maglia rosa himself, here are a collection of reactions to stage 3 of the Giro d’Italia.

Michael Matthews (Orica-GreenEdge)

“It’s been a dream come true so far for this Giro d’Italia. We planned to get the team time trial win and this was another big goal for us. We reconned it last week and we knew what to expect so from then on we tried to do as best as we could and we pulled it off.

“It went right from the very start. A big breakaway went right away and we had two of our key climbers in the breakaway. That took a lot of pressure off the guys in the pelotons so we could sit back and try to save as much energy as possible for the final. I had a really good rider in Simon Gerrans leading me out. When I saw this it was really special and I knew from there I just had to finish it off for the team.”

On Domenico Pozzovivo’s crash: “You can tell everyone in the peloton gets really down when something like that happens. I know the feeling that he’s probably in at the moment, I’ve been in the same situation and it’s really sad to see. I’d like to devote this win to my team and to Pozzovivo.”

Carlos Betancur (AG2R-La Mondiale)

“We just know that he (Pozzovivo) fell on the descent, we don’t know how… It was a very difficult moment for the team. Of course Pozzovivo has to leave the race now, which is very sad for us. We wanted to do very well in the race. It’s now down to me. I didn’t have very good legs today but it's three weeks.

“He’s gone to the hospital but we know that he’s going to get better, he’s a great champion.”

Pavel Kochetkov (Katusha) – New mountains classification leader

“It was a really interesting day from the start of the stage. Half way through we didn’t really know what was going to happen so I decided to attack on that second category climb just to do something.”