VALDOBBIADENE, Italy — In what seemed like an instant, perhaps the time it takes to snap a finger, Christian Vande Velde was on the pavement Monday during the third stage of the Giro d’Italia, grimacing as pain shot through his back.

Vande Velde — the Garmin-Slipstream team leader and the fifth-place finisher in last year’s Tour de France — crashed after nearly 90 miles of the 123-mile stage. He was going about 30 miles per hour when his front tire touched the tire of a bike ahead of him, causing him to tumble.

Without one of cycling’s best overall riders, the peloton pushed to the finish in this town surrounded by undulating hills and vineyards abutting the Dolomites.

“It’s horrible to have your team leader out of the race, especially when you don’t know what happened or how bad it is,” said Tyler Farrar, a sprint specialist on Team Garmin who went on to finish second in the stage behind Alessandro Petacchi of Italy. “It’s really sad for all of us because we know Christian was in so much pain.”

Petacchi, winning his second consecutive stage, took the leader’s jersey from Mark Cavendish of Britain. Cavendish, caught behind a late-race crash, finished 85th.

By the time Petacchi was celebrating atop the podium, Vande Velde was in a hospital. There, he learned, to his relief and to the relief of his team, that the Tour de France in July would not go on without him.

Vande Velde, from Lemont, Ill., had hopes of finishing in the top three at the Tour, and is likely to be there to try to accomplish that goal, team officials said.

At the team hotel in Cittadella on Monday night, the team doctor Prentice Steffen said that X-rays and physical examinations showed that Vande Velde had broken at least one rib, maybe two, and sprained his back. The middle of his back also has a severe bruise.

“It’s too early to tell the extent of the injury, so we can’t say exactly how long he’ll be out,” Steffen said. “But in two weeks, maybe 10 days, he’ll be riding on a bike with some discomfort. In three weeks, maybe four, he’ll be riding full speed.”

Vande Velde is expected to travel Wednesday to the team’s training headquarters in Girona, Spain. He will undergo a magnetic resonance imaging exam to see if there is any damage to ligaments, muscles or other soft tissue.

Meanwhile, his team will have to fend without him at the Giro, which was supposed to be Vande Velde’s main training ground for the Tour, which starts July 4 in Monaco.

“If this happened at the end of the Giro, it’d be an absolute disaster,” Matt White, a Garmin race director, said. “But because we have a bigger window now, I don’t see it being a problem with him being in top form at the Tour.”

Initially, White thought the worst when Vande Velde crashed. He saw Vande Velde gripping his right upper thigh and thought he had broken his femur. His teammate David Zabriskie, who had stopped to help Vande Velde, thought Vande Velde might have broken his back.

It turned out to be less serious than first thought. But not necessarily less painful.

When Vande Velde first stood up at the hospital, he looked pale and sweaty and about to pass out, team officials said. Some teammates visited him in his room after dinner, but even trying to joke with him backfired.

For Vande Velde, breathing, standing — and even laughing — is excruciatingly painful, his teammates said.

Vande Velde will be ready, though, to race in the Tour of Switzerland in June, the team said. It will replace the training he is missing at the Giro. But his team has more than two grueling weeks of the Giro to go.

White handed those riders their daily schedule and a note Monday: “Well what can I say? We lost our leader and came close to victory. Tomorrow we’ll have a well-deserved spell.”

NOTES

Lance Armstrong is in fifth place over all, 31 seconds back. His teammate Levi Leipheimer, the Astana team leader, is in eighth, 44 seconds behind. Their team’s ability to race, however, is ticking down. Astana’s riders have not been paid recently because a Kazakh state holding company, Samruk-Kazyna, that gives the team most of its money has had financial problems.

Johan Bruyneel, the team director, said the International Cycling Union had sent a letter to the cycling federation in Kazakhstan and demanded the riders’ payment. If the riders are not paid by May 31 — the final day of the Giro — the team will be suspended by the cycling union, Bruyneel said.

“At least we’ll get to finish the Giro,” Bruyneel said.

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