Five riders had sprinted to the front of the pack early on in the 166.6 kilometre race from Fribourg to Delémont and eventually found themselves five minutes ahead.

However, most of those riders soon dropped back into the main group as the hilly course started to take its toll.

Spaniard Fraile, riding for Astana, was not tempted into any breakaways early on in the race and instead decided to conserve his energy for the final sprint.

In this end, this paid dividends for the 27-year-old as, with just 100 metres to go, he sprinted to the front of the pack to claim the stage win in a time of four hours 3min 42sec.

Italy's Sonny Colbrelli, riding for Bahrain Merida, and Portugal's Rui Costa, compete for UAE Team Emirates, finished in second and third respectively.

Despite winning today's stage, Fraile is still not the overall race leader.

That honour currently sits with Slovenia's Primož Roglič, who competes for LottoNL-Jumbo, thanks to an overall time of 4:09:16 after today's stage race and yesterday's prologue time trial.

The event in Switzerland continues tomorrow with a relatively flat 173.9km race to Yverdon-les-Bain.

Tomorrow also sees the start of the Tour of Chongming Island, part of the International Cycling Union's 2018 Women's World Tour.

The race will be held across three days on the Chinese island from tomorrow (April 26) to Friday (April 28).

Eighteen six-member women's teams, including from China and Hong Kong, will descend on the island to take part in the 359.3km race.

The race will both start and end at Xincheng Park with the second stage taking place on Changxing Island.