Tour de Suisse 2024: Thibau Nys impresses again with punchy victory on stage 3

Thibau Nys continues to impress in his development as a road rider. The Lidl-Trek held off the challengers of the likes of Stephen Williams and Alberto Bettiol to win stage 3 of the 2024 Tour de Suisse.

With five men getting themselves into the breakaway of the day, there was a distinctly Swiss feel the attackers with four of the five leaders racing on home roads. Heading into the final 50km, the difference between the break and the peloton was already starting to shrink, with just 2:23 separating the two groups on the road.

At around 18km to go, on the penultimate categorised climb of the day, Movistar Team's Johan Jacobs was the final breakaway rider to be caught by the peloton. On the front of the bunch, EF Education-EasyPost were setting a strong pace, with a number of the sprinters, including Mark Cavendish, dropping out of the action at the back of the group.

On the descent towards the final categorised climb however, Team Visma | Lease a Bike took over at the front. The first attack however, came from the INEOS Grenadiers and Brandon Rivera, with Valentin Paret-Peintre quickly countering. No attacks were able to properly snap the elastic however, as the group summitted the climb relatively intact. With just under 11km to go though, there were still a few more small kickers offering opportunities for the attackers. Despite a testing move from Tom Pidcock on the descent, the peloton was still together heading into the final 5km.

Then with 3km to go, Marc Hirschi made his move on one of those aforementioned kickers, managing to get a small gap off the front of the bunch. Alpecin-Deceuninck and Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale were leading the chase behind and with around 600m to go, Hirshci was caught. In a thrilling and punchy finale, Thibau Nys opened things up and the Belgian held off the charges of Stephen Williams and Alberto Bettiol to take the win.

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