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Tour of Turkey

Tour Of Türkiye 2026 Stage 3 Preview — 132.7km Marmaris To Kıran, 7.9% Summit Finish, Crabbe's Sprint Card Closes For The First GC Day Of The Race

CYCLING LOOKOUT • 28 APRIL 2026

Tuesday 28 April 2026, 11:31 CET, Marmaris seafront. The 61st Presidential Cycling Tour of Türkiye rolls out for Stage 3, a 132.7-kilometre puncheur draft from the Marmaris waterfront to a Kıran summit finish that climbs 3,172 metres of vertical and closes the final kilometre at 7.9 per cent. After two consecutive sprint stages won by Tom Crabbe, the race finally tilts uphill, and the turquoise leader's jersey will be on a different set of shoulders by the time the floodlights come on at the Kıran summit village.

Crabbe's Flanders-Baloise brief is straightforward and unsentimental — protect the jersey through the early rolling kilometres, then surrender it at the 7.9 per cent kick-up rather than burn the whole team trying to defend a number that was only ever going to last 48 hours. Sports director Hans De Clercq told the morning rider meeting at Marmaris's Maritim Pine Beach that the squad will swap to Stage 4 protection mode the moment the gradient bites: Sentjens and Persico back into the breakaway lottery, Crabbe shepherded inside the time cut, the contract paperwork that has Decathlon-CMA CGM and Lotto-Intermarché reportedly bidding €1m base now formally a Wednesday-onward concern.

The board has reorganised around the puncheurs and second-tier climbers who can't quite reach a Pyrenean summit but find a 9-12 minute summit finish ideal. Cristian Scaroni (XDS Astana) opens 9/4 favourite, the Italian's late-2025 Volta a Portugal stage win at Senhora da Graça (12.4% on the final 800 metres) the most directly comparable result on the WorldTour calendar this season. Oier Lazkano (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) sharpens to 7/2 after his Itzulia Stage 4 podium, with Torstein Træen (Bahrain-Victorious) at 5/1, Orluis Aular (Movistar) at 6/1 on his recent uphill finish form, and Polti VisitMalta's outsider Davide Piganzoli drifting from 16/1 to 12/1 after morning bulletins confirmed his Stage 2 reconnaissance numbers were the second-fastest on the field's GPS download.

The route itself is a textbook Türkiye trap. The first 95 kilometres trace the southern Aegean coast through Içmeler, Datça road and a Cat-3 climb at Marmaris-Içmeler at km 47 (3.4km at 5.6%) that will probably be uncontested as the day's break absorbs the day's only KOM points. The race only sharpens after Marmaris is left for the second time, when the road turns inland through Bayır and begins the long, irregular drag toward Kıran — a series of false flats and broken-gradient ramps before the final 7.9 per cent kilometre that includes a 11.4 per cent bend at 600m to go and a final 200 metres back down to 5 per cent that suits a punchy diesel rather than a pure climber.

Türkiye Meteoroloji's 09:00 reading holds the local conditions inside the dry bracket: 22°C at flag drop falling to 19°C at the summit, a south-westerly tailwind on the coastal opening 11-13 km/h that will help an early breakaway disappear, then a switch to a 6-8 km/h Kıran cross-tailwind on the climb itself that won't slow anyone meaningfully but will distort the time gaps on the GPS download. There is a 5 per cent rain probability inside the 16:00-17:30 finish window — effectively zero, the race jury will not be issuing any wet-weather brief.

The sub-plot is the GC reset. Crabbe is sitting on a 24-second cushion built from sprint-stage bonuses, but the Stage 3 podium time bonuses (10/6/4) and the climb's natural selection mean the leader's jersey will change hands with 60 to 90 seconds of compression at minimum. Whoever exits Kıran in the turquoise jersey enters Wednesday's longest stage of the race — 175.6km Marmaris-Fethiye — as the rider every other team will measure their breakaway contributions against. The transfer-market subplot becomes secondary: by 17:30 CET a new 2026 Tour of Türkiye favourite will be on the GC sheet, and the rest of the week's narrative reorganises around them.

Stage 3 flag drop is at 11:31 CET (12:31 local Türkiye time), with the Kıran summit finish projected for 16:18-16:32 CET depending on the breakaway's gap at the foot of the final climb. The leader's turquoise jersey ceremony has been moved up to 17:00 CET local at the Kıran summit village rather than the usual Marmaris seafront podium — the first time the race has held a jersey ceremony at altitude since 2018.

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