Tour de Suisse stage 3 LIVE: Will the sprinters seize their only chance or is this a breakaway day?

Action on the climb

It's kicking off again on Wildhaus. The gap to the breakaway has come down to below a minute and we have riders attacking from the peloton now. We could see a whole new breakaway form here...

First climb of the day

The riders are onto the day's first difficulty. It's named the Wildhaus and it measures 9.4km at an average gradient of 6.6%. It's a solid climb and has been granted category-1 status here.

And here we can see it being formed...

That's Dalby driving it away with Laurance to his right and Brenner to his left. You can glimpse Germani behind centrally, while De Pestel had to come from a way back to join - that's him in green and blue over on the right of your screen.

Here's a first shot of our breakaway

After 25km, the breakaway has established itself with a lead of 90 seconds.

This could well be our break of the day. The peloton, which had split, has now reformed and the gap has gone out to 40 seconds after 15km of racing.

Breakaway attempt

Seven riders have gone clear: Axel Laurance (Netcompany-Ineos), Sam Oomen (Lidl-Trek), Sander De Pestel (Decathlon CMA CGM), Lorenzo Germani (Groupama FDJ United), Louis Vervaeke (Soudal-QuickStep), Simon Dalby (Uno-X Mobility), Marco Brenner (Tudor Pro Cycling).

Their gap is only slim at the moment and the pace is still high.

Groves looks to be one of those riders off the back - not the best sign with a couple of bigger climbs to come before long.

The stage starts out with a climb that's uncategorised but still difficult, and it's seeing plenty of riders dropped already. Nothing sticking off the front just yet, although Bauke Mollema has just had a pop.

And we're off

After the short delay, the riders have rolled out and they've just reached kilometre-zero, where the flag has dropped to wave racing underway. Here comes the fight for the breakaway...

What happened yesterday?

Well, Tadej Pogačar went on the rampage again, although he didn't end up winning. He actually looked like he was trying to set up teammate Jhonatan Narváez on the late steep climbs but ended up going for it himself. However, the breakaway was by that point too far ahead and while Pogačar and Mathias Vacek almost made contact in the home straight, it was Romain Gregoire (FDJ) who kicked clear from the break to land a big win.

Race report & results in here

Start delayed

The riders are still on the start line and we're hearing the roll-out has been pushed back to 2pm local time, so in just over 10 minutes. No reason has been given as yet.

We don't have a huge number of pure sprinters in this race. Matthew Brennan (Visma-Lease a Bike) stands out, while the likes of Corbin Strong (NSN), Orluis Aulaur (Movistar), Luke Lampert (EF), and Marius Mayrhofer (Tudor) are here. Alpecin-Deceuninck are an interesting one - they were meant to have Jasper Philipsen before he changed his mind about coming, but the team do have Kaden Groves and a certain Mathieu van der Poel.

The riders have all signed on for the stage and they're about to roll out. The start proper is coming up in just over five minutes' time.

Hello!

Hello there and welcome along as the Tour de Suisse continues with a stage that represents the only chance for the sprinters in this race, but far from a nailed-on opportunity. The hills we have in the first half of this parcours could prove selective and we may end up with a breakaway day on our hands, depending on how many teams are really interested in controlling for a sprint. It should be an interesting one, and we will of course have every pedal stroke covered right here.