Now that the sun has rejoined the Tour de Suisse, the riders raced at a breakneck speed between Biel and Guin. And the day proved exciting from start to finish since the breakaway group of four, including the world champion Michael Kwiatowski, dodged the hard chasing peloton until the flamme rouge. 

The fugitives rode out of their skins. Nevertheless, it was Alexander Kristoff (Katusha) who came up trumps at the finish line, being the most powerful on the false flat, robbing Peter Sagan (Tinkoff-Saxo) of another victory, which would have given the Slovak the lock on the stage win record.

For IAM Cycling, the day was a bit of a wash since they did not manage to place a rider in the main breakaway. But Stefan Denifl retained his lead in the king of the mountains competition, and can expect to remain in the lead of that classification jersey until the end of the event on Sunday.

After a tiring day, Jonathan Fumeaux explained why it was so difficult to get the break back. 

“You have to fight to get into the break, and then when it’s gone, the curtain is pulled. Today, the four guys took more than an hour to get a gap. And then the sprinters’ teams took care to control the advantage. But since the guys in the break were so strong, we had no respite on the leg-breaking circuit. So far in this race, I have not succeeded in finding a chance to go in a break, but I have not lost hope. Tomorrow we will have another opportunity with another loop, but it will also probably be complicated.”

Kjell Carlström, one of the directeurs sportifs along with Mario Chiesa, confirmed Fumeaux’s assessment. 

“Unfortunately, we did not find the right opening to join the break that we had talked about in the team meeting before the stage.  From the moment it was clear that we had missed the boat, the watchword was to save strength and recover as much as possible, particularly because the last two stages are complicated, especially Sunday’s race against the clock.  But it was not an easy day to try and recover; the four escapees proved very hard for the sprinters’ teams to reel back. 

"On Saturday, the stage will again be difficult with a circuit that will make use of some of the same roads that will be used for the time trial.  I doubt that we will see a bunch sprint since the topography of the course will be so difficult.”