Ineos Grenadiers crisis deepens as Giro d'Italia plans fall apart | Video | Sticky Bottle

Geraint Thomas limps home with team mate Salvatore Puccio for company. His big plan to win the Giro and rescue the nightmare season of Ineos Grenadiers is already over after just three stages and despite a brilliant ride on stage 1 (Photo: Gian Mattia D'Alberto)

Ineos Grenadiers crisis-hit 2020 season has worsened today as Geraint Thomas crashed in the neutralised zone on Giro d'Italia stage 3 and was dropped later in the race.

The British rider's general classification aspirations fell away just as his team expected to swap the race lead from its stage 1 TT winner Filippo Ganna to Thomas.

Ganna was so confident that his team mate would take the lead from him that before the stage he said he was ready to give up the pink jersey to Thomas, who gained huge time on Saturday's TT on all of his rivals.

Also suffering a nightmare today was another of the big general classification hopes, Simon Yates of Mitchelton Scott, who was dropped on the final climb, up Mount Etna.

Thomas went out the back of the bunch with 20km to go and before the field had even reached the final climb. Yates hung in for longer but still got spat out with 8km remaining to the finish.

The stage - some 150km from Enna to Etna - was won by Ecuadorian champion Jonathan Caicedo; the EF Pro Cycling rider surviving from the early breakaway to take his first ever win outside his home country.

Caicedo won the stage after four hours of racing by 21 seconds from Giovanni Visconti (Vini Zabu' KTM).

A third breakaway man was next over the finish line; Harm Vanhoucke (Lotto Soudal) filling the final step on the podium some 30 seconds down.

*Caicedo takes a brilliant stage win, his first victory outside Ecuador (Photo: Gian Mattia D'Alberto)*

Just behind the three survivors from the breakaway came the general classification men.

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Wilco Kelderman (Team Sunweb) attacked from the favourites’ group and finished solo, some 39 seconds down on the winner and 12 seconds up on the big names who remain in contention.

In that group was: Jakob Fuglsang (Astana), Rafal Majka (Bora-Hansgrohe), Vincenzo Nibali (Trek-Segafredo), Jonathan Castroviejo (Ineos Grenadiers) and Domenico Pozzovivo (NTT Pro Cycling).

Steven Kruijswijk (Jumbo-Visma) was just five seconds off the back of the group in 10^th and Joao Almeida (Deceuninck-Quickstep) was a further seven seconds back.

And because Almeida had finished 2^nd on the opening stage TT on Saturday, he now takes the maglia rosa into tomorrow’s stage.

*Simon Yates finishes today having been distanced with 8km to go. However, while he lost time he may not be completely out of the general classification race (Photo: Gian Mattia D'Alberto)*

Simon Yates lost 4:22 today and it is not impossible that
he might come back into the reckoning in the overall battle, especially as
there are no very clear cut favourites to dominate.

However, there is no way back for Geraint Thomas; a massive 12:19 time loss today meaning he must refocus his goals for the remainder of the race.

Now aged 35 years and having been dropped by his team for the Tour de France this year, Thomas looked like he was on the way back to top form in recent weeks.

He finished 2nd overall in Tirreno Adriatico, as his team's challenge on the Tour collapsed and Egan Bernal abandoned the race, and the Welsh cyclist followed that up with 4th at the Worlds TT.

However, his crash today clearly had a serious impact on him and he was in trouble even before the final climb began, with noted non-climber Ganna waiting for him.