One year ago Daryl Impey won a stage of the Bayern Rundfahrt and took over the leader's jersey to briefly position himself as a potential overall winner of the race. He missed out in the time trial but the South African definitely has a certain feeling for Germany's biggest stage race.

 

Today he took another stage victory in the race when he won the long, wet third stage of the race. After a great attack by Jens Voigt (Trek) had been chased down by the sprint teams inside the final 4km of the race, all was set for the expected battle between the sprinters.

 

Voigt, however, may have taken the sting out of the legs of the sprint trains. When Impey saw his chance to launch a late attack - much like he did when he won a stage of the Vuelta al Pais Vasco in 2012 - they were clearly on their knees. They failed to bring back the Orica-GreenEDGE rider who took a surprise victory in the German race.

 

Moments later his compatriot Reinardt Janse Van Rensburg (Giant-Shimano) made it a rare South African 1-2 in a major event when he beat Alexander Porsev (Katusha) in the sprint for second.

 

The 232.7km stage from Grassau to Neusäss was a very long one and had a very hilly first part. However, the second half was mainly downhill until the riders reached a tricky finale that contained three smaller climbs that could potentially trouble the sprinters.

 

For the third day in a row, it was a rainy day in Bayern but that didn't put a dampener on the attacking spirit. After a calm start, the racing got aggressive until the break was formed after 14km of racing.

 

Voigt and Tino Thömel (Stuttgart) launched the right attack and were later joined by Sebastian Deckert (Brandenburg) and Heiner Parra (Caja Rural) to form a strong quartet. Voigt had briefly dropped Thömel on the first climb to score the KOM points but the four riders soon found together.

 

While the gap reached 7.10 at the first intermediate sprint - won by Thömel - Ag2r started to chase. They kept the gap stable for a long time while Decker scored maximum points on the second climb.

 

Whent Thömel won the second intermediate sprint, the gap had come down to 4.20. IAM and Katusha were now leading the chase and they brought the gap down to less than 3 minutes with 40km to go.

 

That was the signal for Voigt and Thömel to attack and as the Trek rider started to ride full gas, his young compatriot soon fell off the pace. While he scored the points on the final climb, MTN-Qhubeka and Orica-GreenEDGE started to chase.

 

With 14km to go, he was still 40 seconds ahead while Sky did a good job to allow Geraint Thomas to score 2 bonus seconds for being second in the final intermediate sprint. With 7km to go, he still had 22 seconds but 4km from the line it was over for the German.

 

Instead, Impey launched a surprise move and as he hit the finishing straight he had an 8-second gap. The peloton failed to chase him down and so he became a surprise winner of the third stage of the race.

 

For Mathias Frank, it was a long but rather easy day and the Swiss comfortable defended his 5-second lead over Thibaut Pinot (FDJ). He faces a much harder test tomorrow when a rolling 25.5km time trial is set to decide the race.