Fernando Gaviria makes the most of his team-mates’ gas-opening

Fernando Gaviria won stage three’s inevitable sprint finish – albeit he didn’t have many people to beat thanks to the WONDER OF CROSSWINDS.

You may half-remember the Colombian as the guy who didn’t quite get a medal in the omnium in the 2016 Olympics. Gaviria is very much in the ‘up and coming’ category when it comes to road sprinters.

Speaking after the race, he said: “My team mates’ legs were very strong. They opened the gas. It’s a beautiful victory.”

The win put him into the overall lead – although I’m never quite sure why I bother mentioning such things in these early stages.

Those crosswinds then

The front group contained just 11 riders. The only one who might prove to be an overall contender is the magnificently named Bob Jungels. It wasn’t a particularly big deal anyway as they only gained 13 seconds on the peloton.

The rider called Rohan (Dennis) was one to miss out, however. He lost five minutes because of a crash.

Stage four

Tuesday’s a rest day and then Wednesday brings a summit finish atop Mount Etna – one which I feel duty bound to describe as ‘potentially explosive’.

I will almost certainly not be reporting on this stage, by the way, so apologies for that in advance. Reportage is in fact likely to be patchy at best all week. More on that later, but in my defence the homepage of this site has stated “occasionally missing stages, not necessarily keeping track of everything and not properly knowing what I’m talking about” ever since I launched the site, so you can’t say you weren’t warned.

Foodwise, we’re looking at swordfish rolls and rice balls in this part of the world.