Andre Greipel takes stage, Alberto Contador injured

Tinkoff-Saxo's Contador was unable to put on his race leader's maglia rosa on the podium owing to apparent injuries sustained to his left shoulder in the mini pile-up, which occurred inside the final hundred metres of the 183km stage in Tuscany.

Jacinto Vidarte, Contador's press officer, later said that Contador had hurt both his left knee and shoulder in the crash, which was caused when Italy’s Daniele Colli (Nippo-Vini Fantini) collided with the camera lens of a spectator on the finish straight.

While Colli was taken directly to hospital with what looked to be a horrific injury to his left arm, Contador’s condition is said to be not as serious. "He's got a bad shoulder and he's hurt his knee but I think he should be okay to continue," Vidarte said following the Spaniard's refusal to don the pink jersey.

But the concern etched across on the Contador's face – and his distinctively negative body language – told a different story. One day after he was popping the Prosecco cork on taking the race lead in Abetone, the 32-year-old did not even pick up the bottle this time round.

Contador had managed to finish the stage to preserve his two-second lead over Italian Fabio Aru (Astana), with Team Sky's Richie Porte a further 18 seconds back in third place. Time will tell, however, whether or not his bid for glory in Milan will continue for much longer.

With the chaos of the crash playing out in his wake, German national champion Greipel outsprinted Italians Matteo Pelucchi (IAM Cycling) and Sacha Modolo (Lampre-Merida) to take his first win of the race after a textbook lead-out by his Lotto-Soudal team on the Tuscan coast.

FIVE-MAN BREAK: After the race’s first mountaintop finish and two fast and furious stages in the Ligurian hills, the peloton was in need of this largely flat transitional stage through the Tuscan countryside.

Two riders - Marek Rutkiewicz (CCC Sprandi) and Eduard Grosu (Nippo-Vini Fantini) – went clear shortly after the start in Montecatini Terme, quickly joined by the chasing trio of Marco Bandiera (Androni), Alessandro Malaguti (Nippo-Vini-Fantini) and Alan Marangoni (Cannondale Garmin).

As a quintet, the leaders build up a maximum lead of five-and-a-half minutes before the only categorised climb of the day at Pomarance. A series of uncategorised hills followed the feed zone in Larderello before the gap came tumbling down in the flat run into Castiglione.

CROSSWIND ALERT: The previously uneventful stage came to life inside the final 20km when some strong crosswinds caused a few splits in the peloton.

With the break reeled in with 15km remaining, Contador’s Tinkoff-Saxo team were instrumental in piling the pressure on the peloton’s back markers, keeping their man out of trouble and stirring both Team Sky and Astana into action.

Once the winds died down towards the finish, the peloton bunched back together as the teams of the main sprinters edged forward in preparation for the expected bunch sprint.

COLLI COLLARED: Greipel’s Lotto-Soudal team dictated play in the final sprint but an otherwise messy affair was thrown into further turmoil when 33-year-old Italian Colli rode too close to the barriers and was knocked off his bike at top speed when his shoulder collided with the extended lens of a spectator.

Graphic images showed Colli’s left arm twisted at a quite ghastly angle – perhaps the result of a compound fracture at the elbow. The Nippo-Vini Fantini rider was attended to on the road before being taken to hospital for surgery. His team later confirmed that Colli had broken his arm.

Contador was one of numerous riders caught up in the aftermath of the incident – although it initially appeared that the Spaniard had escaped relatively unscathed. The 2008 Giro champion did not display any obvious cuts or wounds when he crossed the line – although his demeanour on the podium suggests the alarm bells at Tinkoff-Saxo could well be ringing.

GLORIOUS GREIPEL: With the young generation dominating the 98th edition of the Giro, Greipel became the first rider in his 30s to pick up a win after an expert display of teamwork his Lotto-Soudal.

After New Zealand’s Greg Henderson teed up the 32-year-old, Greipel kept to the script with an emphatic display of sprinting to deny glory to a cluster of Italian pretenders.

Besides Pelucchi and Modolo – second and third respectively – the home nation saw Manuele Belletti (Southeast), Giacomo Nizzolo (Trek Factory Racing), Alessandro Petacchi (Southeast) and Elia Viviani (Team Sky) finish in the top seven, with Nicola Ruffoni (Bardiani-CSF) and Davide Appollonio (Androni-Giocattoli) completing the top ten after eighth-place Slovenian Luka Mezgec (Giant-Alpecin).

“The whole team did a great job from kilometre zero,” Greipel told Eurosport after the third Giro stage win of his career. “The last three kilometres were just as we planned it in the bus this morning.

“With 1.5km to go Greg [Henderson] went for it and he kept it up till 600m to go. This time I didn’t go too early and timed it just right.”

Friday’s 264km stage seven from Grosseto to Fiuggi – the longest in the race – features one categorised climb and some rolling terrain ahead of a slightly uphill finish that could thwart the pure sprinters. It remains to be seen if race leader Contador takes to the start.