Team Sky stepped up to the plate for the third consecutive stage to ensure Chris Froome leads Tour de Romandie heading into the mountains.

The Brit was again protected well by his team-mates who took to the front to set the pace and chase down a number of dangerous attacks.

The end result was another day in yellow, his six-second advantage over Andrew Talansky (Garmin-Sharp) intact ahead of Saturday’s queen stage.

Armchair ride

After the stage Froome again paid tribute to the work of his team-mates and the help they have provided.

“I’m feeling good," he confirmed on the Sky website. "I’ve had the luxury of just sitting on the wheels for the past three days. And I have literally had a wheel to sit on all day, every day. The only time I was in the wind was in the prologue!

“It’s been good for me but obviously there’s no such thing as an easy day here. The other teams have been attacking us and the guys have really dug deep every day. They’ve been fantastic.

“The guys are tired but I’d like to think everyone is pretty tired at this point in the race. Tomorrow being the queen stage means it’s all to be decided I think – especially with bad weather moving in and up at those altitudes around 2000 metres. We’re going up some pretty big climbs."

With tactics again likely to come into play at only a slender advantage to play with, Froome revealed that having team-mate Porte so close on the GC could play into their hands. He added: “I think we’ll see how we go on the climb but having Richie right there on the GC is a big bonus for us. Like today where he slipped into a move and that put the pressure on the other teams to chase. It meant we could sit back a little bit and recover on the wheel. Tomorrow we might be able to play that card again but we’ll see how it plays out on the climb. Of course we’d ideally like to go into the final time trial with a bit more of an advantage.”

Strong performance

Sports Director Servais Knaven also summed up another good day and also filled us in on the situation as weather threatens to play a factor on the queen stage.

The Dutchman said: “Yet again it was a day of good work from the team. It was pretty hard in the final and a real test. We managed it well with Richie and David around Froomey. That was good and it’s another day over.

“Tomorrow is by far the hardest stage with four category one climbs. It’s really important for GC. The guys want to get stuck in and we’re just hoping the weather is not too bad tomorrow. We are monitoring the forecast but we’ll see what happens if we do get snow. Hopefully we can ride the full stage.

“You have to prepare to do the mountains and we have. Froomey is really up for it but it’s not the first time this year we’ve had snow. We go up to 1,800m and if it’s 10 degrees at the bottom it’s going to be around zero at the top. We’ll see what happens!”