{"id":249796,"date":"2025-07-09T04:18:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-09T04:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/249796\/"},"modified":"2025-07-09T04:18:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-09T04:18:10","slug":"i-thought-i-saved-it-but-i-didnt-make-it-race-leader-avoids-injury-in-late-crash-in-giro-ditalia-women-stage-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/249796\/","title":{"rendered":"‘I thought I saved it, but I didn’t make it’ – Race leader avoids injury in late crash in Giro d’Italia Women stage 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stage 3 of the Giro d’Italia Women<\/a> was expected to finish in a mass sprint, but instead, a mass crash in a roundabout 2.5km from the finish took out dozens of riders and held up many more, leaving only eight riders to contest the victory.<\/p>\n

Only a few riders escaped the carnage as they were ahead of the crash, with Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx Protime) winning the stage<\/a> ahead of Josie Nelson (Picnic-PostNl).<\/p>\n

Carina Schrempf (Fenix-Deceuninck) was the first to crash when her rear wheel slid in standing water on the inside lane of a roundabout.<\/p>\n

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While Eleonora Gasparrini (UAE Team ADQ), Josie Nelson (Picnic PostNL), Lotte Kopecky<\/a>, and Barbara Guarischi (both SD Worx-Protime) overshot the roundabout, they were able to return to the race route.<\/p>\n

In the chaos behind, Marianne Vos (Visma-Lease a Bike) unclipped her right foot and rode across a traffic island to avoid the crash and numerous riders were held up and out of contention for the stage win, including race leader Anna Henderson (Lidl-Trek).<\/p>\n

However, since the incident occurred within the last 3km, all affected riders received the same time as the stage winner, so there was no need for a frantic chase. Marlen Reusser even jokingly sprinted against her Movistar teammates when they crossed the finish line.<\/p>\n

“There was a lot of stress from about 30 or 25 kilometres to go,” Henderson described the final after the stage.<\/p>\n

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“A lot of teams lined up, then the rain came in and made all the roundabouts super slippery. It was kind of a waiting game when the crash was actually going to happen because it was super fast and slippery roads. You saw the big one on the roundabout, and I thought I saved it, but I didn’t make it.”<\/p>\n

The maglia rosa escaped with only light injuries, and that seems to have been the case for the other crashed riders as well: The rain that caused the crash also helped avoid heavy injuries as riders slid along the wet asphalt instead of getting a hard impact.<\/p>\n

Over the course of the evening, most teams gave the ‘all-clear’, and none of them announced any major injuries, meaning everyone escaped with no more than a fright.<\/p>\n

Subscribe to <\/strong>Cyclingnews<\/strong> for unlimited access to our Giro d’Italia Women coverage. Don’t miss any of the breaking news, reports, and analysis from one of the biggest women’s stage races of the season. <\/strong>Find out more.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stage 3 of the Giro d’Italia Women was expected to finish in a mass sprint, but instead, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249797,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4104],"tags":[4230,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-249796","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114821352952390579","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249796\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}