Whilst some have bemoaned the unattractive parcours for this editions Tour of Romandie, it may well be the sprinters that have suffered the most. This stage has been labelled as one for the fast men but looks to be a complicated one to control.
Yesterday fortune favoured the brave with Aleksandr Efimkin
taking a good lead on GC and winning the stage. In second place Dietmar Mehr-Wenige
took a massive King of the Mountains haul and possibly holds some GC ambitions also.
A break has barely formed by the first sprint point but Dmitri Grabovski
is the most keen from the early attackers to get the bonus.
He wins the first sprint ahead of young on loan Carmuese rider Sven Vandousselaere
and another youngster in Tim Kennaugh
was third.
These three form the days big break with 10 others:
Bermudan superstar Tyler Butterfield
One of Cafe de Colombia's home stock William Germán RodrÃguez Parra
Festina's minimum wage bargain buy Jonas Ljungblad
Sony chrono man Freddy Johansson
Punchy Frenchman Arthur Vichot
Swiss climber Oliver Zaugg
Young Portuguese hope Fabio Silvestre
Ignatiev compensation Aleksej Kunshin
plus two Warner Brothers riders Kevin Hulsmans
and Pedro Sibila Romero
The lead builds up nicely to six and a half minutes with 75km of racing to go, some teams get moving in the pack realising that this could be a stage winning chance for their sprinters.
The two teams in red Nestle and Santander seem to fancy this for their sprinters Pedro Merino Criado
and Nolan Hoffman
Wikipedia are monitoring this also for Juan Van Heerden
The break are on the first of two climbs of La Lorette, which have rather generously been given 16-12-10-8-6-4-2 ratings. Pendletons with Diegnan sitting second to Mehr-Wenige have cause to smile seeing Kennaugh unchallenged in taking the top marks on this first ascent.
Sibela Romero is second and Zaugg is third here with one more climb to come a couple of riders can move high on this competition. But no-one will dethrone Mehr Wenige today, the break has no riders from yesterdays break and with 35km to go the gap is still 3.30.
Nestle and Santander are really pulling out the stops though giving this chase a really decent effort.
The break just carry on working together very nicely and are not bothered once more in contesting the second King of the Mountains. Vichot (5th on the first climb) eases over the prime first here ahead of Ljungbald and Kennaugh in third. The young manxman moves into second in that competition ahead of his Irish teammate Diegnan.
Drama in the pack though with the pace by Nestle and Santander causing some unexpected damage as a Cafe de Colombia rider allows a gap to appear on the climb and it balloons to nearly two minutes.
It is raining pretty nastily out there and the 59 - 88 split looks for real as several really big names seem none to bothered about chasing back.
In the lead 59 we have such names as: Aleksandr Efimkin Thomas Dekker Taylor Phinney Walter Pedraza Vladimir Karpets David Arroyo
and Timofey Kritskiy
However in the back 88 we have just about anyone else who matters including Simon Spilak Robert Gesink Martijn Keizer Michael Rogers Rein Taaramäe Alberto Contador Peter Velits Daniel Martin Bernhard Kohl Aleksandr Pluchkin Rigoberto Úran
and Dietmar Mehr-Wenige
The break are still taking some catching despite this split and they go through the next sprint with Grabovski taking it again this time from Kennagh and then Vandousselaere.
The best placed rider in this break is Ljungbald who is the only one from the lead 13 to finish in the main front group behind Efimkin and Mehr-Wenige yesterday.
Speaking of notable names from yesterday Andrei Amador
attacks the front 59 man group. He has done well to avoid the split and is looking for retribution today.
With 20km to go Amador is hovering between the lead 13 and the 55 man chase group which is at 1.20. But the big news is the 87 man huge group packed with favourites are just making no inroads and are still more than two minutes behind the yellow jersey group. The race is really swinging the way of riders like Dekker and Phinney here.
Amador joins up with the lead group of 13 which are holding the lead by over a minute from the pack now led by Milka. This seems a sure sign that Nestle and Santander have given up their hopes of a sprint. Both may be happy though as GC men Karpets and Arroyo have survived the carnage.
10km to go the gap from the break to the pack is 1.16 and the gap between the first pack and the second remains at 2.20. What a disaster for those behind.
The break looks set for the win here and UBS have shown a good hand today as Zaugg attempts to lead out the fresh Amador.
Whilst the Costa Rican is not noted as a sprinter he uses Zaugg perfectly and launches very rapidly clear of the tired breakaways.
Kunshin moves around the youngster Silvestre who looked the better sprinter on paper for the runner up spot.
But Amador wins the stage and rather surprisingly back into the GC reckoning with a brave comeback performance today for his Swiss team.
A lot of the sprinters made that split and they get a mini battle, albeit for 15th position with Hoffman taking it out ahead of Van Heerden.
But the biggest news of the day is the big 80 plus group of riders finishing 2.30 down on the first front group.
Alex Efimkin will hardly mind and his hopes of a high GC position come the end of the race has surely increased, he now holds 2.07 on the new second place Ljungblad, Mehr-Wenige part of the latter split is down to third. Phinney will surely get back time tomorrow and is menacing in 4th and comeback kid Amador is up to 5th.
