"The start was very calm because the first climb was very steep and very long."

Those were the words of Astana's Davide Malacarne after stage three at the Tour de Suisse. The peloton started the stage from the bottom of San Gottardo Pass in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland after unplanned road construction on the original course forced organizers to shorten stage three.

After climbing the 18km, 28-switchback cobblestone road up to a height of more than 2000m, riders met rain and wind on the descent back into the Ticino Valley. Jakob Fuglsang, Alexey Lutsenko and Miguél López waited to be active in the final hour of the race as teammates Bakhtiyar Kozhatayev, Daniil Fominykh and Borut Božič, along with Malacarne, worked to chase a 3-man breakaway into the final two climbs of the stage.

Fuglsang finished in the same time as stage winner Peter Sagan of Slovakia, and remains 14 seconds from overall leader Tom Dumoulin of the Netherlands. López also finished with the leaders, while Lutsenko followed around one minute behind.