Matt Slater
BBC Sport at the Tour de France

Drove last 80km of route & it's not all about the Mur. Hilly terrain, tight corners, mixed road surfaces, some cross winds. Hard.

If you follow the one-day Spring Classics you will know all about the Mur de Huy because it features heavily in the Fleche Wallonne race. That punishing race sees the riders tackle the climb three times. Today it's just the once. But that should be enough.

So, what does today's stage have in store for us? It's largely flat for the first 100km, with four categorised climbs in the final 50km or so. The first three are mere appetisers for the final hill of the day. The Mur de Huy. Mur means wall. And that should tell you all you need to know about the 1.3km ascent that awaits the riders. The steepest part of the slope is 25% and it averages out at 9.6%.

Matt Slater
BBC Sport at the Tour de France

A touch of deja vu about today's start: Bora's Jan Barta jumped off as soon as the riders left the neutralised zone, taking three men with him. His compadres for the third stage are Serge Pauwels of MTN-Qhubeka, IAM's Martin Elmiger and Europcar rider Bryan Nauleau. They have a lead approaching four minutes.

The peloton will be quite happy to leave them out in front for a couple of hours, which should give Mark Cavendish a chance to calm down a bit and refocus on the flat stages that remain. He will get a few more chances and I think he will take a couple of them, at least.

Not a great start for his Etixx - Quick-Step team, though. They had hoped to have two stage wins in the bag by now, and Tony Martin in yellow. Instead they have nowt apart from the Tour's best tweets and quotes.

The riders are around 40km into today's 159.5km stage from Anvers to Huy and there are a ridiculous number of people lining the streets as the riders zip through the towns and villages of Belgium. We have four men in the break...

Yellow jersey in the team or not, Cavendish has quickly moved on. He was up early this morning and tweeted: "Well, today's a new day. Hope everyone has a good one."

And that seems a perfect juncture for us to move on too and take a look at today's third stage...

Yellow Jersey
Classification

Image source, Reuters

Getting your rider in yellow is a big deal, even if it is only going to be for a day or so. The sponsors love the exposure for starters. Fabian Cancellara has worn the yellow jersey on 28 occasions before today but that has not stopped his Trek team from sorting him out with a yellow bike to complete his outfit.

The row centres on whether Mark Cavendish sat up when Andre Greipel sprinted past him? The jury is out.

If Cav had finished third, his Etixx - Quick-Step team-mate Tony Martin would have taken over the yellow jersey. A fact not lost on their team manager Patrick Lefevre, who fumed: "Cavendish stopped sprinting and this costs Tony the jersey. I am not happy at all. Probably this was our last chance to take the yellow jersey."

Cavendish, who is out of contract at the end of this season, wrote on Twitter:, external "If I could hang on for 3rd, I could hang on for the win... Some imbeciles think cycling is a computer game."

It is unclear whether Cav was aware of Lefevre's comments, when he took to social media.

Green Jersey
Classification

Image source, Getty Images

Mark Cavendish was not a happy bunny after losing out to German rival Andre Greipel in the race for the stage victory. It looked like a nailed-on win for the Manx Missile as he entered the closing kilometre on the wheel of his trusted lead-out man Mark Renshaw.

However, Renshaw peeled off with around 300m remaining, leaving Cavendish exposed and in his post-race chat with the media, he said his team-mate "went too early and kind of left me hanging. We died."

However, that was just the start of it and who wouldn't have wanted to be the proverbial fly on the wall in the Etixx - Quick-Step team bus last night...

Yellow Jersey
Classification

Image source, AP

It was also a terrific day for Fabian Cancellara, our new race leader after a dramatic sprint in Zelande on Sunday. The Swiss one-day classics specialist needed to finish in the top three to earn enough bonus seconds to take over from Rohan Dennis and he did just that, edging out Mark Cavendish on the line. Which neatly brings us to...

Yellow Jersey
Classification

It was a terrific day for Chris Froome, who was kept near the front of the peloton by his Team Sky team-mates as howling crosswinds split the field.

Froome stayed out of trouble to finish seventh in a reduced bunch sprint, but he was four seconds clear of two-time winner Alberto Contador, while defending champion Vincenzo Nibali and 2013 runner-up Nairo Quintana were caught out by a crash as the race split and they trundled over the line almost 90 seconds down.

So while Froome is 48 seconds behind the race leader, he is 12 seconds ahead of Contador, and more than one minute clear of Nibali and Quintana.

Hello, and welcome to live text and radio commentary (from 15:00 BST) of stage three of the 2015 Tour de France. There were winners and losers galore on Sunday's intriguing stage two and before we get into today's race, which left Anvers about 45 minutes ago, let's take a quick look back...

Image source, Getty Images

"We're two days down and I couldn't have hoped for much more at this stage," said Britain's 2013 Tour de France champion Chris Froome after gaining time on all his main rivals on Sunday's second stage.