Tom Dumoulin came under pressure in yesterday's stage of the Tour of Alberta when almost the entire Giant-Shimano team missed a split in the crosswinds. In the end, he defended his leader's jersey but admitted that the team had made a big mistake.

Tom Dumoulin survived today’s third stage of the Tour of Alberta, finishing in the select front group that formed in the second half of the stage in the crosswinds that battered the peloton in the Canadian flatlands.

Dumoulin made the front group of 40 with teammate Daan Olivier and managed to control the situation at the finish, coming home 12 seconds behind a late break of three riders to conserve his overall lead in the race.

The stage was another hard fought race from start to finish, with any sort of break struggling to establish itself. After around 60km a break of around 25 riders formed at the front of the race with Dumoulin missing the split. The team soon brought the race back together but it set the tone for the rest of the stage.

Two riders were finally allowed to break clear, gaining nearly two minutes before the pace in the peloton behind was lifted in the crosswinds. With under 50km to go the peloton split into two distinct groups with the front group of around 40 riders pulling away to catch the leaders before establishing a gap of 55 seconds. The advantage never grew much more than this but with both groups working hard a stalemate formed.

Dumoulin was in the front group but he only had Olivier for company. The team put pressure on in the group behind to keep the gap at a reasonable distance which also put pressure on the teams driving the pace in the front while Dumoulin could sit in the wheels.

The gap was gradually falling as the race hit the finishing circuits on the military airfield of Edmonton, but the front group had enough on an advantage to fight out the victory. The attacks came with one lap to go, with three riders pulling away. The selection worked well for Dumoulin although together with Olivier he had to keep a check on the three to make sure they did not get too much room as there were also time bonuses available on the line.

Sep Vanmarke (Belkin) took the stage from the front three while behind Dumoulin's group came over the line just 12 seconds behind meaning that the maximum he lost was 22 seconds. With Vanmarke over 50 seconds down on the overall Dumoulin’s lead was safe for another stage.

"It was really, really hard and really, really fast," Dumoulin told Cyclingnews after the stage. "Attacks went from the beginning like yesterday, and then finally a small group got away, and we were actually pretty happy with the situation.

"Then we got completely surprised by the attack of Bissell and Orica. It was actually a huge mistake that we made. I could just jump over to the first echelon together with Daan Olivier, but two is not enough. We got surprised, but we won't make that mistake again."

Olivier gave his thoughts on the day straight after the stage: “I had to fight really hard to get in the front split to help Tom as I had already done quite a lot early on in the stage. With all the attacks and echelons there was a lot of chasing to do but we managed to control it well.

“In the end when we were up front I only really had to start pulling in the last 10km so it worked out pretty well but it was a hard day.”