Peter Sagan made it a hat-trick of wins when claiming an emphatic victory on a rain-lashed fourth stage at the Tour de Suisse.
The Liquigas-Cannondale rider, who also won the opening time trial and stage three, was easily the strongest in the bunch sprint which rounded off a testing 189 kilometres route from Aarberg to Trimbach/Olten.
The Slovak star won by a couple of bike lengths from Joaquin Rojas (Movistar), with Michael Albasini (Orica-GreenEDGE) in third.
"I'm very pleased with the work the team did to help set up the finish and very happy to be able to win again," said Sagan afterwards.
And with the main overall contenders finishing in the front group it means that Rui Costa (Movistar) maintains his eight seconds advantage over Fränk Schleck (RadioShack-Nissan), with Roman Kreuziger (Astana) still in third, 15 seconds adrift.
The stage had been animated by a number of attacks, the last of which from Team Sky's Lars-Petter Nordhaug briefly threatening a sprint finish.
It had taken 73km for the first significant break to finally go clear but those nine riders included Dario Cataldo (Omega Pharma-QuickStep), only 1:15 back on the general classification and therefore never likely to be allowed much leeway.
Cataldo was still out on his own with 30km remaining but it was at that point that Nordhaug jumped out of the main gap, bridged the small gap and set sail for home.
Going over the last climb of the day to Salhohe, 18km from the finish, Nordhaug had 30 seconds on the pack but was being closed down by Martin Elmiger (AG2R La Mondiale) and Greg Van Avermaet (BMC Racing).
That pair caught him with 6km to go but by then the chasing pack had started working hard to close down the escapees and it was back together for the final 3km.
By then Sagan only had one Liquigas-Cannondale team-mate to help him but it made no difference as he went for an early sprint and comfortably held his rivals at bay.
Another up-and-down day on Wednesday takes the riders 193km from Olten/Trimbach to Gansingen.
