Plumelec, France: BMC won the 28km team time trial from Vannes to Plumelec yesterday but Chris Froome tightened his grip on the leader’s yellow jersey.
His Sky team may even have beaten the world team time trial champions but for Ireland’s Nicolas Roche cracking on the final 1.7km, 6.2 per cent climb to the finish.
Having started the climb 5sec ahead of BMC, Sky missed out on the win by just one second.
“I was pretty generous again in the second half of the course,” said a distraught Roche.
“It’s true that G (Geraint Thomas) was really strong and that took me out of my comfort zone. I don’t have any words to explain my disappointment.”
But Froome still put time into the three other members of the ‘fantastic four’ favourites with reigning champion Vincenzo Nibali losing out the most of all.
His Astana team finished fifth at 35sec from BMC and the 30-year-old Italian is now 2min 22sec behind Froome in 13th place.
Ahead of Monday’s first rest day, it was a second disappointing stage in a row for Nibali, who also lost 10 seconds on Saturday, and the Sicilian must regroup quickly before tomorrow’s first mountain stage.
Two-time former winner Alberto Contador’s Tinkoff-Saxo were fourth on the stage at 28sec and the Spaniard is now fifth overall at 1min 03sec.
Colombian climber Nairo Quintana’s Movistar team finished third but only gave up 4sec by the finish and the 2014 Giro d’Italia winner is up to ninth overall at 1min 59sec.
But many eyes will now be on Tejay Van Garderen, who was second to Froome at last month’s Criterium du Dauphine, and sits second overall at 12sec.
The American was fifth in the Tour both last year and in 2012 and may now believe he has what it takes to challenge for the overall victory.
And his BMC team managed their challenge for the stage win perfectly, unlike Astana.
Desperate to gain back some time on Froome, Nibali pushed too hard on the first uphill section inside 10km and shed two of his teammates as Dmitriy Gruzdev and Rein Taaramae lost touch.
Once they hit the final climb to the finish, Nibali led his four remaining teammates all the way, seemingly not even needing to get out of second gear himself.
While Astana’s time was perhaps disappointing, at least the Sicilian demonstrated his form is back after his little blip on Saturday’s finish up the Mur (wall) de Bretagne.
Astana initially had the best time at the first time check but Movistar, who were only sixth fastest, had gone quickest by the second.
But they suffered similar problems to Astana shortly after the 20.5km second timecheck as Quintana accelerated on a climb and cracked his entire team.
The diminutive climber practically had to stop to wait for them to catch up but they soon regained their shape.
They still had eight riders and having been 18sec up on Astana at the bottom of that climb, they kept gaining time and finished with a 31sec advantage.
Tinkoff-Saxo had gone fastest at the first time check at
10km but BMC beat that by 7sec with Sky matching the Swiss outfit.
By the second check at 20.5km, though, Tinkoff had dropped 13sec below Movistar while BMC beat Quintana’s team by 3sec, only for Sky to go quicker still by a second, and they still had
eight of their nine riders at that point.
At the finish Tinkoff had remained ahead of Astana but continued to lose time to Movistar, finishing 24sec back.
BMC maintained their slight advantage to Movistar, beating them by 4sec and then breathed a sigh of relief as Sky missed out on the line. AFP
