Elisa Balsamo (Lidl-Trek) won stage 3 of the Giro d'Italia Women, taking another sprint victory in the maglia rosa ahead of Lily Williams (Human Powered Health) and Femke Gerritse (SD Worx-Protime) in an uphill sprint in Buja.
After the GC favourites split the race on the Montenars climb, a reduced peloton came back together on the run-in to the finish.
A flurry of attacks eventually saw Sigrid Ytterhus Haugset (Uno-X Mobility) get away with 6.6km to go. The Norwegian had an advantage of up to eight seconds but was in view of the chasing peloton on the finishing straight where the last 500mwere uphill.
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Lily Williams launched a long sprint at the 300m mark and flew past Haugset to take the lead, but Balsamo went after her and came around with 120m to go to take another victory.
"Today was such a hard day in the final. I still need to recover. Once again, my team did an amazing job, they were pulling the whole day to close on the breakaway. And in the final, Niamh [Fisher-Black] and Bella [Holmgren], our GC leaders, were helping me. I knew this sprint because I did the recon, so I was ready, but I’m also a bit surprised and super happy," said Balsamo after the finish.
With the stage victory, Balsamo defended and extended her overall lead going into the stage 4 mountain time trial.
"My big goal today was to try to keep the pink jersey, and I was fighting, I gave it all. The climb was so hard for me, but I knew that it was a long way until the finish. I really tried to fight to stay with a group, then we came back, and everything was perfect," she said.
More to follow...
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Lukas Knöfler started working in cycling communications in 2013 and has seen the inside of the scene from many angles. Having worked as press officer for teams and races and written for several online and print publications, he has been Cyclingnews’ Women’s WorldTour correspondent since 2018.
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