Sagan strikes again

Peter Sagan claimed his second stage victory at the Tour de Suisse topping the bunch sprint on stage three into Aarberg.

The Liquigas-Cannondale rider proved the bravest through a technical finish on wet roads, even taking his foot out of the pedal around a corner en route to victory.

The Slovak overhauled Baden Cooke (Orica-GreenEDGE) in the final 50 metres with Ben Swift (Team Sky) putting in a strong turn to place third, the trio distancing a talent-packed field in a narrow run to the line.

Swift's Team Sky had been instrumental in helping to claw back a dangerous three-man break after a railway crossing had temporarily held up the peloton.

The bunch kick enabled overnight leader Rui Costa (Movistar) to maintain the yellow jersey, holding an advantage of eight seconds after three stages.

Michael Morkov (Saxo Bank), Guillaume Bonnafond (AG2R- La Mondiale) and Jonas Vangenechten (Lotto-Belisol) were the trio who headed out in the opening kilometres, the break pushing their advantage out to almost 11 minutes on the run out of Martigny.

With 53km to go the peloton ground to a halt after the barriers came down in the Swiss countryside, a small group of around 20 riders making it through including race leader Costa and most of his team-mates.

After continuing at first the group were forced to slow down by the race director, the section neutralised to allow the peloton time to regain the two minutes lost.

That all played into the hands of the break, who had 7:15 at that point and saw their advantage spin out before the peloton began to chase hard.

Van Genechten found himself dropped on the ramp up to Frienisberg, the gap behind also dropping over the penultimate climb as the sprinters' teams got into their stride.

Heading into the finish Sagan again proved both his bike-handling skills and a devastating turn of speed.