Mathias Frank (BMC) delivered a splendid performance in today's third stage of the Tour de Suisse to take over the leader's jersey from Cameron Meyer (Orica-GreenEdge) in his big home tour. Formidably assisted by Tejay Van Garderen, he dropped the previous race leader on the final climb and now finds himself in the position as the first Swiss leader of the race since 2011.

When BMC arrived in Quinto for the start of the Tour de Suisse, most attention was focused on Tejay Van Garderen. The American had just won his first stage race since turning professional in California and was by many marked out as one of the major favourites for the event.

Three stages into the race, the tables have been completely turned. Having struggled in the summit finish to Crans-Montana on Sunday, the American now finds himself as a luxury domestique for home rider Mathias Frank who has emerged as one of the strongest climbers in the race. The situation is the opposite to the one in California where Frank sacrificed himself for Van Garderen in the first mountain stage but still went on to finish 4th behind his winning teammate.

Frank finished 2nd in yesterday's tough mountain stage and today he appeared to be totally comfortable on the tough category 1 climb Hasliberg inside the final 30 kilometres of the race. Knowing that second-placed Ryder Hesjedal (Garmin-Sharp) had crashed out of the race, the 3rd-placed Swiss knew that he just had to get rid of overall leader Cameron Meyer to take over the lead in his big home race.

Hence, he used his strong team to position him perfectly at the bottom of the final climb and on the lower slopes, teammates Michael Schär, Marcus Burghardt and Markus Kohler. When it was time to put Meyer under pressure, Van Garderen hit the front hard and for most of the climb he paced the group of favourites which constantly thinned down.

Meyer was dropped a few kilometres from the finish and from then on Frank was the virtual leader of the race. He responded strongly to an attack from Roman Kreuziger (Saxo-Tinkoff), avoided a crash by Michele Scarponi (Lampre) to make the decisive 4-rider selection and worked hard to build up a solid gap over the chasing group.

Unsurprisingly, the Swiss praised his team and especially Van Garderen for their efforts.

"The whole team did a great job placing Tejay van Garderen and me at the bottom," he said. "Then Tejay set the perfect pace. I was talking to him and he said he would set a good, hard tempo. It was just perfect how we did it. Tejay is riding really strongly. To have a guy like him as a teammate is all you can ask for."

Actually, Frank went down in a crash in the feed zone when he was unable to avoid two riders who hit the deck. At first, he felt some pain but as the race went on, he got better and better. He is confident that the team staff will make him ready for the jersey defence.

He is, however, a Tour de Suisse veteran and he knows the many pitfalls that the race offers.

"One moment of not being attentive can be fatal for you," he said. "But I have a great team around me and I'm really confident in the job they can do and that they can keep me out of trouble."

Sports director John Lelangue was also impressed by the teamwork that saw his leaders well-placed at the bottom of the tricky final climb and he is confident that the strength of the team will be a key attribute in Frank's jersey defence.

"At the briefing this morning, we decided to go for it after the first passage through the finish line," he said. "There was a fourth category climb with a critical downhill so we wanted to be in the front before the last climb. That was a great job by the whole team to make it happen."

 "Every day will be difficult," he said. "We know there will be some easy days. But in a stage race, you have to be concentrating every day. The good thing is, we have a good team around Mathias and around Tejay for supporting the yellow jersey. We have seen they are all riding on a high level."

Frank now leads Kreuziger by 23 seconds while defending champion Rui Costa (Movistar) is 12 seconds further behind. The next three stages are all likely to end up in sprints and so Frank could very well keep his lead at least until Friday's queen stage.

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