The 3rd Tour of Alberta spent a second day in the mountains on Saturday and the riders from Team Katusha made the most of it, animating the final climb with attack after attack, finally sending Sergey Lagutin up the road in the final group.

But yesterday’s stage winner Tom-Jelte Slager had plans of his own and sprinted away in the final to take the win, followed by race leader Bauke Mollema. Lagutin was seventh. Mollema retained his race lead with 2 stages still to go.

"We didn’t have an exact plan today but wanted to see what we could do with several of our riders. We were attacking and attacking but on this day some others were just stronger than us. I don’t think we lost any ground – I think the entire team did a really good job. We worked well together to control the situation. It was so beautiful here in Jasper National Park. It was so clean and nice with a view you usually only see in pictures," said Sergey Lagutin.

The 162,1 lm stage began in the hamlet of Jasper and headed south to make a U-turn at the bottom of the park to complete three laps before turning up the hill to arrive at the ski area of Marmot Mountain. Once on the climb, an early break was brought back with 5 km to go when Katusha’s Simon Špilak was the first to attack. Eventually he was brought back, setting up the attack from Sven Erik Bystrøm, who held the lead until 2,7 km to go. Finally it was Ilnur Zakarin’s turn and the Russian climber put in a good dig too before Lagutin and the select group separated for the final. It was all just a little too far in the end however and Slager took control in the last kilometer to earn the win.

"I was expecting this today. We wanted this for Sergey Lagutin. He kept a good result on the GC and we can be happy with that. We tried to do something before the last 2 or 3 kms but Bauke Mollema was just stronger. That’s the way it is," said team director Dmitry Konyshev.

Tomorrow’s stage 5 is a long 206,2 km with several sectors on unpaved road. The stage begins in Edson and ends in Spruce Grove.