MARK Renshaw had an uneventful day three yesterday in the Tour Down Under, finishing 90th for the 138 kilometre trip from Norwood to Victor Harbour in South Australia.

The Bathurst rider was more than six minutes behind stage winner Simon Gerrans, the heavyweight race favourite winning a sprint finish to pick up the victory over Rohan Dennis and Michael Woods for his Orica-GreenEDGE team.

The result was Gerrans’ first individual stage win anywhere for more than 12 months, and his fourth overall at the Tour Down Under, putting him into the lead in the general classification by three seconds over Jay McCarthy and five seconds ahead of Dennis.

An early breakaway that at one stage built a lead of almost six minutes didn’t last long enough to threaten a win, the last

surviving member of that group (Laurens De Vreese) having been caught with just over 20km left to race.

The action was thick and fast in the last quarter of the stage as the peloton lifted the pace to an incredible 90km an hour on the approach to the Corkscrew climb. Tinkoff, riding for race leader Jay McCarthy, caused a split in the bunch that caught out Gerrans and the rest of his team while a crash ended the hopes of Julian Arredondo.

Richie Porte from team BMC was the first rider to attack the smaller bunch on the 2.4km climb, with Woods and Sergio Henao the next to surge clear. 

The attacks caused further reaction on the climb as Henao lead over the summit with Woods close behind.

Determined to put their rivals into difficulty, Porte and Dennis had another go on the technical descent, which succeeded in dragging another eight riders across to Woods and Henao after crossing the summit 10 seconds behind them.

They broke 100km/h on the way down, and the intensity didn’t drop given that 10 bonus seconds were up for grabs at the finish line for the stage winner.

Gerrans, a man with Tour de France stage wins to his credit, knows how to find the line and he did just enough to beat defending champion Dennis in a photo finish, as he looks to add to his three career TDU ochre jersey wins.

“To come away with a stage win and the leader’s jersey, we couldn’t have hoped for a lot more than that from today,” Gerrans said after the stage.