Team Sky fries them all
June 6 th 2018 - 16:49
Team Sky won the team time trial of the 70th Critérium du Dauphiné with an important margin over BMC in the 35-km long stage 3 from Pont-de-Vaux to Louhans-Châteaurenaud. They brought Michal Kwiatkowski back in the lead of the overall ranking with an advantage of more than one minute over Adam Yates (Mitchelton-Scott), almost two minutes over Romain Bardet (AG2R-La Mondiale) and more than two minutes over Vincenzo Nibali (Bahrain-Merida) ahead of four big mountain stages.
Team time trial world champions Sunweb started first but their finishing time was successively beaten by the three following teams: Vital Concept – it was the first ever TTT for the new French team and Bryan Coquard’s only second TTT after stage 9 of the 2015 Tour de France with Europcar –, Dimension Data and LottoNL-Jumbo. As Vincenzo Nibali’s Bahrain-Merida squad completed the course in a relatively modest time, Romain Bardet’s AG2R-La Mondiale beat the other pre-race favourite for the overall classification by 35 seconds.
AG2R-La Mondiale on the up
After AG2R-La Mondiale, Trek-Segafredo, Quick Step and BMC scored a better finishing time. Bardet’s team showed their improvements in the team time trial, hoping to limit their loss to one minute but Team Sky smashed all their adversaries in 36’37’’ at the average speed of 57.350km/h on a pan flat course with mostly tailwind and very few curves.
Four Team Sky rider on top of GC
In the overall ranking, the British outfit took the first four positions with Michal Kwiatkowski back in the lead after only day, Gianni Moscon, Jonathan Castroviejo and Geraint Thomas. Other pre-race favorites Bob Jungels, Adam Yates, Bardet and Nibali now have a deficit of 1’08’’, 1’17’’, 1’52’’ and 2’28’’ respectively.