Giro d'Italia: Marcel Kittel takes lead by winning stage three

Marcel Kittel produced another awesome display of sprinting power to win stage three of the Giro d’Italia and take the overall race lead.

Twenty-four hours after his crushing victory on stage two, the 27-year-old Etixx - Quick-Step rider repeated the feat in Arnhem by comfortably beating Elia Viviani (Team Sky) into second place and Giacomo Nizzolo (Trek-Segafredo) into third by several bike lengths.

Kittel started the day one second behind race leader Tom Dumoulin (Giant-Alpecin) in third, but the 10 bonus seconds he received for his win lifted him to the top of the general classification and into the pink jersey for the first time in his career.

Dumoulin is now second, nine seconds down, while Andrey Amador (Movistar) is 15 seconds back in third.

Kittel's triumph continued his record of winning every Giro road stage he has started and means he has now worn the race leader's jersey at two of the three grand tours, having spent a day in yellow at the 2014 Tour de France.

He told Eurosport: "I am super-happy to have this leader's jersey. I can say now that I wore the leader's jersey in the Tour and also in the Giro d'Italia. It's something very unique and something I am really proud of.

"Today was a super-tough day, actually. A lot of teams were really nervous and it was difficult to stay in position in the end. The breakaway stayed quite long away and we had to go full gas."

After three days in the Netherlands, the Giro will take a break on Monday to allow the riders to travel to southern Italy. It will resume with a 200km rolling fourth stage from Catanzaro to Praia a Mare on Tuesday.

Stage three result

1 Marcel Kittel (Ger) Etixx - Quick-Step, 4:23:45

2 Elia Viviani (Ita) Team Sky, same time

3 Giacomo Nizzolo (Ita) Trek-Segafredo, st

4 Andre Greipel (Ger) Lotto Soudal, st

5 Alexander Porsev (Rus) Katusha, st

6 Kristian Sbaragli (Ita) Dimension Data, st

7 Moreno Hofland (Ned) LottoNL-Jumbo, st

8 Arnaud Demare (Fra) FDJ.fr, st

9 Rick Zabel (Ger) BMC Racing, st

10 Matej Mohoric (Slo) Lampre-Merida, st

General classification

1 Marcel Kittel (Ger) Etixx - Quick-Step, 9:13:10

2 Tom Dumoulin (Ned) Giant-Alpecin, +9sec

3 Andrey Amador (Cos) Movistar, +15

4 Tobias Ludvigsson (Swe) Giant-Alpecin, +17

5 Moreno Moser (Ita) Cannondale, +21

6 Bob Jungels (Lux) Etixx - Quick-Step, +22

7 Matthias Brandle (Aut) IAM Cycling, +23

8 Roger Kluge (Ger) IAM Cycling, +25

9 Chad Haga (USA) Giant-Alpecin, same time

10 Georg Preidler (Aut) Giant-Alpecin, +26