Daniele Bennati edged out Erik Zabel in a mass sprint for the line to claim victory in stage three of the Giro d'Italia on Monday.
The Liquigas rider made the decisive surge in the final 400m to complete the 221km course from Catania to Milazzo in five hours 37 minutes one second, with Zabel second and Danilo Hondo third.
Franco Pellizotti (Liquigas) retained the race leader's pink jersey just a second ahead of Christian Vande Velde and eight clear of Danilo Di Luca.
The last time the Giro visited Milazzo was back in 1961 when Italy's Nino Defilippis was victorious.
And it was another home favourite who emerged triumphant this time on a sprinters' paradise of a course in a race punctuated by crashes.
Francaise des Jeux rider Jeremy Roy launched the first attack of the day about 50km in, but within 10km he had been joined at the front by Riccardo Chiarini, Mickael Buffaz, Kevin Seeldraeyers, Matej Jurco and Pavel Brutt.
The leading six had established a three-minute advantage over the peloton 120km from the finish, but that was whittled away as the chasing group made ground on the flat coast roads.
The peloton was forced to break hard though 70km out when Andrea Moletta went down, apparently untouched, causing a major pile-up which also sent British duo Mark Cavendish and David Millar and stage two winner Riccardo Ricco tumbling.
The Italian picked up a hand injury in the crash, but got up off the ground to continue the race, albeit 24 seconds down on the main bunch.
The peloton continued to reel in the leaders, narrowing the gap to 90 seconds with 45km to go and wiping out their advantage completely 25km from the line to set up a sprint finish.
Australian Bradley McGee's Giro hopes were extinguished when he was sent flying by Vasili Kiryienka and suffered a broken right collarbone.
Instead it was Bennati who broke and, despite having Zabel on his wheel all the way to the line, held on to snatch victory.
Ireland’s Philip Deignan finished in 26th place for the AG2R team.
Tuesday's fourth stage sees the peloton travel the 183km from Pizzo Calabro to Catanzaro-Lungomare.
