Team Giant-Shimano had planned to set up either Marcel Kittel or Luka Mezgec for the sprint in today's penultimate stage of the Tour de Romandie but the team failed to bring back the strong break. The team admitted that they had underestimated the hard nature of the course on a day when Kittel ended up abandoning the race.

Luka Mezgec has finished eighth on the tough rolling final road stage of the Tour de Romandie after the breakaway stayed clear, just. After a group of five spent all day out front, just three riders remained at the front of the race, holding off the peloton by just nine seconds.

The 174km stage was based on a rolling circuit of around 30km and the team initially aimed to ride for a sprint, but after a strong break pulled clear early on, and the ever changing gradients started taking their toll the peloton soon started to break up.

Three riders from the initial five pulled away in the final 15km and with 11km to go held just over a minutes advantage. As the kilometres dropped away, so did their advantage but they managed to hold on to enough of a gap to fight out the victory between themselves, with Michael Albasini (Orica-GreenEDGE) coming out on top, taking his third stage win of the race.

Mezgec  was the fifth rider across the line in the bunch sprint for fourth place nine seconds behind.

Team Giant-Shimano coach, Christian Guiberteau confirmed how hard the stage was today.

“We studied the profile before the race and the stage looked tough but out on the road it was much harder than we thought.

“A strong break pulled away and we tried to help bring it back but it was difficult to orginise a good chase out there. Marcel let go of the pace and dropped back as the bunch split up but Luka was still there at the end. He could have finished higher than eighth but he nearly crashed on the run in and had to work his way back up after this.

“It was another good workout for the guys today and even though we haven’t had a result in this race we will come away from it having rallied together as a team and the guys heading to the Giro will have had a good week’s racing in the legs.”

Tomorrow is the final stage of the race, with a 18.5km individual time trial after which the race winner will be crowned.