Slovenian Borut Bozic won the fifth stage of the Tour De Suisse.
Today's stage was from Huttwil to Tobel-Tägerschen and was 204.5km long.
When the riders got into Tobel-Tagerschen in the Canton of Zurich for the first time, there was still 37kms to go and it was Jan Barta who had been part of a four man breakaway who took the fourth sprint.
Talking of which this was again a day for the sprinters who fancied it and with 13;9km to go, it was gruppo compacto and BMC leading from the front.
HTC came to the front with 4kms from the finish along with Team Sky who were looking to get a win for Ben Swift.
With help not coming for Cavendish who was boxed him, Tom Boonen went away followed by Daniel Oss who got passed him. The Vancansoleil rider could not hold the pace and his team mate Borut Bozic came through to win in a time of 4hr, 44 mins and 48 seconds.
Oscar Freire was second with Peter Sagen third. Ben Swift finished tenth.
Damiano Cunego leads the race by 54 seconds from Mauricio Soler.
Stage six is from Tobel-Tägerschen - Triesenberg/Malbun and is 157.5kms long
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Germany's Patrick Gretsch has claimed his first ever professional win today, when the HTC-Highroad rider blasted to victory in the opening prologue of the Ster ZLM Toer.
Rounding off a perfect start to the five-day stage race, Gretsch's team-mate Alex Rasmussen was second, three seconds back.
Twenty five year old Gretsch completed the flat, seven kilometer, evening time trial in Alblasserdam, Holland in a time of eight minutes and thirty seconds with Rasmussen in second and Great Britain's Alex Dowsett in third.
"Patrick did a perfect job, taking a lot of risks on the corners but using his time trial skills very well, too," said HTC-Highroad sports director Jan Schaffrath, "He really pushed it in the first two kilometers, which were very technical, had lots of corners and even a few cobbled sections, and I think that's where he made the difference."
"Alex rode really, really well, but he was already a couple of seconds down on Patrick right from the start and it stayed like that all the way through."
A silver medalist in the Worlds U-23 Time Trial back in 2008, Gretsch was delighted to kick-start his professional palmares with a victory in the race against the clock.
"Everybody knows he's a good time triallist, and he really did a lot of hard work to get this one right," Schaffrath said, "We took a bit of a risk deciding that all our top riders should have late starts, but finally everybody had the same weather conditions and the best riders won."
HTC-Highroad took the same race outright last year, but Schaffrath was cautious about their chances of repeating an overall victory.
"We're in a good position and tomorrow's [Thursday's] stage should finish in a bunch sprint, which would be good for Alex. After that we're into the hilly stages and we'll take it on the day-by-day."