For the third stage in succession a sprint finish would decide the victor of the 3rd Bayern Rundfahrt stage. Sam Bennett (Bora-Argon) would ride away with all the spoils today as he bested Nacer Bouhanni (Cofidis) and Ramunas Navardauskus (Cannondale-Garmin).

An early break of 5 riders would go clear today but much like the opening two stages, the interest in the stage win by the sprint teams was just too great and they never really stood a chance. Even though the parcours was slightly tougher than the previous two stages the race came back together on the finishing circuits with just 15km to go.

MTN-Qhubeka p/b Samsung would concentrate its efforts on delivering Reinardt Janse van Rensburg to a good position for the sprint finale. Despite their being a small climb on the finishing circuit which would be completed 3 times, it was still a fairly large group that came to the line together. The African team were certainly hoping for more of a selection but it was not to be and van Rensburg would do battle with the masses.

In the end van Rensburg would cross the line in 9th place, his 3rd successive top 10 finish in three days. The next port of call will be tomorrow's time trial. With the strong time trialling captain Steve Cummings no longer in contention, the riders will look to put in a consistent effort tomorrow before launching their final assault on Sunday's final road stage.

"Well today was a bit disappointing once again for me. I was really hoping that the lap would have been a bit harder but it was not so. It was definitely my aim to get a better result than I did but that's how it goes sometimes," van Rensburg said.

"Today's stage was ridden on historical ground as most of the course was run along the former inner German border. With a quite a few short but steep climbs and a lumpy circuit it was the hardest stage of the race. We focussed on positioning Reinie in the final and he landed with another top 10. Merhawi [Kudus] also rode strongly today, attacking with 10km to go. Tomorrow's TT will be a showdown for the GC and today's result means we can still eye a good overall position," sports director Jens Zemke said.