Tour de Suisse: Jhonatan Narváez beats Xandro Meurisse to win stage 3 as pair narrowly hold off the chasing peloton

Marco Brenner leads the first breakaway of the stage (Image credit: Getty Images)

On what was due to be the best chance at the Tour de Suisse for the sprinters, they wouldn’t have felt it early on as they climbed almost straight out of the flag drop near Bad Ragaz on an uncategorised ascent, where seven riders established the early breakaway of the day.

Getting up the road was Sander De Pestel (Decathlon CMA CGM), Axel Laurance (Netcompany-Ineos), Sam Oomen (Lidl-Trek), Lorenzo Germani (Groupama FDJ United), Louis Vervaeke (Soudal-QuickStep), Simon Dalby (Uno-X Mobility), and Marco Brenner (Tudor), and they had built a lead of more than 90 seconds ahead of the first climb.

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But as the race reached the foot of the Wildhaus (9.4km at 6.6%), everything started to change, with the lead coming down significantly, and several riders trying to make the junction from the peloton to the breakaway, which was 16 riders for a moment.

Racing came back together with 120km to go on the 157-kilometre day, but the attackers were still eager to try and get away, and the peloton was in pieces over the top of the long climb.

Race leader Pogačar was right towards the front during much of the early action, but would have been satisfied once teammate Jhonatan Narváez made it into a new lead group alongside Xandro Meurisse (Pinarello Q36.5) and Michał Kwiatkowski (Netcompany Ineos).

Meurisse and Narváez leave Michał Kwiatkowski behind to lead the race (Image credit: Getty Images)

Kwiatkowski dropped back soon after, but ended up in the strong chase group, which had formed coming off the Wildhaus, containing Emiel Verstrynge (Alpecin-Premier Tech), Antonio Tiberi (Bahrain-Victorious), Ewen Costiou (Groupama-FDJ United), Aleksandr Vlasov (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), Maximilian Schachmann (Soudal-QuickStep), and Dalby and Brenner from that earlier move.

Onto the second categorised climb of the day, the Schwägalp Passhöhe (4km at 8.4%), the chasing group of eight were at times around 30 seconds down on the two leaders. But by the time they reached the bottom of the descent with 84km to go, they were two minutes behind the duo, the peloton further down at four minutes.

Over the next 35km, as Visma started to work for their respective sprinters, the gap for Narváz and Meurisse kept going in the right direction, out to more than three minutes with 50km to go, but the opposite was true for the eight chasers – they were caught with 48km to go.

By this point, the weather had closed in on the riders with heavy rain and strong winds, but Visma continued to press on, trying to give Matthew Brennan a chance to fight for the stage win.

Riders race uphill through a village on the road to Bad Ragaz (Image credit: Getty Images)

As the torrential rain finally dissipated into the final 30km, more teams began to commit a rider to the chase behind Narváez and Meurisse, notably EF Education EasyPost, working for Luke Lamperti, NSN for Corbin Strong, and Jayco AlUla for Michael Matthews.

With 10km to go, the effects of the added work became clear, with the deficit down to the two riders in front down to just over a minute, with mostly flat, simple roads to the finish location playing into the hands of the sprinters behind.

That progress slowed as they neared the finish, though, with riders running out of steam and UAE beginning to place themselves towards the front of the peloton to disrupt the pace, hoping their man Narváez had a chance to sprint for the win.

As the 5km to go banner was reached, the lead duo still had 35 seconds of a lead, and it became clear that they should make it.

Storms in the area meant that the TV coverage cut out heading into the last kilometre, but Narváez had played his cards just right, as he tends to as one of cycling’s most clinical finishers, sitting on Meurisse’s wheel as the line approached and easily outsprinting the Belgian with the peloton just a few hundred metres in arrears.