Périgueux, France
Tejay van Garderen of the BMC Racing Team finished sixth in Saturday’s individual time trial to move into fifth place overall at the Tour de France with one day to go.
Learned Never To Give Up
Van Garderen powered his BMC timemachine TM01 to a time of 1:08:29 in the 54-kilometer race against the clock. That helped him surpass Romain Bardet (Ag2r La Mondiale) in the standings by two seconds. “I could not have gone any harder. I gave it everything. That’s for sure,” van Garderen said. “It definitely feels good to move up one place. I saw that he (Bardet) had a mechanical out there, so that would have cost him a bit. So I feel bad for him there. But I feel I worked hard for this fifth place.” Van Garderen’s career best in three previous Tour de France participations is fifth in 2012, the same year he won the best young rider classification. “I definitely showed that I deserved to be up there in a top position,” van Garderen said. “I learned never to give up. I really had to fight through a lot. I’m really proud of my guys and what I did. It shows you can take your lumps and get back up and fight to the end.”
Important Result For The Team
Tony Martin (Omega Pharma-Quick Step) won the stage in 1:06:21, 1:39 ahead of Tom Dumoulin (Team Giant-Shimano) and 1:47 ahead of Jan Barta (Team NetApp-Endura). Race leader Vincenzo Nibali finished fourth, 10 seconds ahead of van Garderen, and leads runner-up Jean-Christophe Péraud (Ag2r La Mondiale) by 7:52. BMC Racing Team Sport Director Yvon Ledanois said van Garderen’s result caps 20 stages of hard work. “I am very happy because this result is very important for the team and for Tejay,” Ledanois said. “It is a good top five result and it was a good time trial result also for Daniel Oss and Peter Velits. I am very happy with the job the guys did during the three weeks.” Oss’s 10th place finish was his best performance in an individual time trial since ninth place in Stage 1 of the Vuelta a Catalunya in 2009. Velits, the Slovakian national time trial champion, finished 16th.
