Italian Domenico Pozzovivo won the third stage of the Tour of Catalonia yesterday (Wednesday) as France’s Pierre Rolland took the overall lead.

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AG2R’s Pozzovivo made a solo dart for home from a seven-man breakaway group around 2km from the finish and held off his charging companions to win by three seconds. Colombia’s Rigoberto Uran took second with Dan Martin of Ireland in third after 156.6km around Girona.

Alberto Contador finished fourth but fellow former Tour de France winner Chris Froome gave up 22sec on the winner after failing to follow the initial break.

Contador said: “I’m happy, I feel quite good. It’s the last race before the Giro d’Italia and it’s good that my legs are responding. Now I need to recover.”

A split in the peloton resulted in a frantic finish to the stage as Tuesday’s winner Alejandro Valverde had been caught behind in the second group that lost 30 seconds.

As Contador’s Tinkoff-Saxo team and the Astana team-mates of Fabio Aru, who finished fifth, pushed the pace up front, the lead group started to splinter on the ascent of Alt dels Angels around 15km from home. Contador attacked, taking Australian Richie Porte, Pozzovivo, Uran and Aru with him.

Porte’s Sky team-mate Froome failed to react and was stuck in a chase group, from which both Martin and his Cannondale teammate Andrew Talansky managed to bridge the gap to the leaders.

As the seven-man group took turns on the front to try to distance the chasers, Pozzovivo pounced on a brief lull to take off on his own and he had the legs to hold off the chasers right to the finish.