Italian champion Elia Viviani wins stage 3 bunch sprint at La Vuelta

Italian champion out-sprinted Giacomo Nizzolo and Peter Sagan at the finish line

The third stage was 178.2 kilometres long between Mijas and Alhaurin de la Torre, which started with a first category climb and a third category halfway through. It was a lumpy stage and the the average speed was down to just 35 kph after yesterday's dramatic stage.

Six riders established the day's breakaway; Pierre Rolland (EF Drapac), Nans Peters (AG2R-La Mondiale), Jordi Simón (Burgos-BH), Antonio Molina (Caja Rural-Seguros RGA), Luis Ángel Maté (Cofidis) and Héctor Sáez (Euskadi-Murias) and built up a lea dof over 4 minutes.

Behind, Team Sky and Quick-Step Floors lead the chase, Quick-Step Floorslooking to lead Elia Viviani for a bunch sprint.

With 40 kilometres to go, Lotto Soudal's Victor Campenaerts, Jelle Wallays, Lukas Postlberger (Bora-hansgrohe) and Alexis Gougeard (AG2R La Mondiale) attacked out of the peloton, meanwhile Rolland decided he'd had enough and dropped out of the breakaway.

With 35 kilometres to go the four chaser caught the breakaway and the attacks started. On a tight descent Victor Campenaerts slid off and hit the deck.

With 18 kilometres remaining, Postlberger attacked his breakaway companions to soo ahead.

Behind the main peloton turned up the gas on the flat run in and the Austrian champion was caught with six kilometres to go.

In the final sprint, LottoNL-Jumbo's Danny van Poppel sprinted first, but was overhauled by Italian's Elia Viviani and Giacomo Nizzolo (Trek-Segafredo) with recovered World Champion Peter Sagan (Bora-hansgrohe) third.

Team Sky's Michal Kwiatkowski kept the leader's jersey for another day, his Sky teammates helping to chase the breakaway down all day.

VIDEO: 2018 La Vuelta Stage 3 Highlights

2018 La Vuelta Stage 3 Top 10

1 Elia Viviani (Ita) Quick-Step Floors 4:48:12 
2 Giacomo Nizzolo (Ita) Trek-Segafredo   
3 Peter Sagan (Svk) Bora-Hansgrohe   
4 Nacer Bouhanni (Fra) Cofidis, Solutions Credits   
5 Simone Consonni (Ita) UAE Team Emirates   
6 Danny van Poppel (Ned) LottoNL-Jumbo   
7 Michael Morkov (Den) Quick-Step Floors   
8 Matteo Trentin (Ita) Mitchelton-Scott   
9 Ryan Gibbons (RSA) Dimension Data   
10 Tom Van Asbroeck (Bel) EF Education First-Drapac p/b Cannondale

2018 La Vuelta GC after Stage 3

1 Michal Kwiatkowski (Pol) Team Sky 9:10:52 
2 Alejandro Valverde (Spa) Movistar Team 0:00:14 
3 Wilco Kelderman (Ned) Team Sunweb 0:00:25 
4 Laurens De Plus (Bel) Quick-Step Floors 0:00:28 
5 Ion Izagirre (Spa) Bahrain-Merida 0:00:30 
6 Fabio Felline (Ita) Trek-Segafredo   
7 Emanuel Buchmann (Ger) Bora-Hansgrohe 0:00:32 
8 Tony Gallopin (Fra) AG2R La Mondiale 0:00:33 
9 Nairo Quintana (Col) Movistar Team   
10 Bauke Mollema (Ned) Trek-Segafredo 0:00:35