Mûr de Bretagne, France – Greg Van Avermaet finished sixth and Tejay van Garderen was 10th Saturday for the BMC Racing Team on the eve of the team time trial at the Tour de France.
Alexis Vuillermoz (Ag2r La Mondiale) attacked in the final 700 meters of the finish climb of the Mûr de Bretagne to win solo, five seconds in front of runner-up Daniel Martin (Team Cannondale-Garmin) and 10 seconds ahead of a reduced peloton.
Heading into Sunday’s 28-kilometer team time trial, Chris Froome (Team Sky) leads Peter Sagan (Tinkoff-Saxo) by 11 seconds overall. Van Garderen is third, at 13 seconds, and Van Avermaet is fifth, 28 seconds back.
“With the team I have and what they have shown so far, I think we are pretty confident,” van Garderen said. “We are just going to go out there and ride as hard as we can. We have four world champions in that discipline on the team, so we will put out the best performance that we think we can.”
In addition to van Garderen, Rohan Dennis, Daniel Oss and Manuel Quinziato were the other three members of the BMC Racing Team’s winning team at the world championships last September. Dennis won the opening stage of the Tour de France one week ago and was part of the winning team time trial squad last month at the Critérium du Dauphiné.
“We are the favorites, but I don’t ever look at the other teams as not challenging us,” Dennis said. “If you start looking at them in that way, you get beat. Also, looking at it as you are not the favorite – that you are chasing the win – never lets you relax.”
