Two days after his amazing stage victory, Nikias Arndt again showed that he has excellent legs at the moment when he finished in the first big group behind the race favourites in today's very hard stage of the Criterium du Dauphiné. His Giant-Shimano team now hopes that he will be in the mix in tomorrow's stage as well.

Today’s fifth stage of the Critérium du Dauphiné always looked like a parcours suited to a breakaway’s survival, and as a result the fight to get in the day’s breakaway was a hard one but eventually Dries Devenyns was part of the 17 man move which formed and set about building a lead. This was after a large crash had taken yet more riders out of the race. The fall occured at around 20km in and four Team Giant-Shimano riders were involved, but all managed to get back on a rejoin the peloton.

The breakaway riders were never allowed a large advantage and the gap hovered around three minutes as they hit the penultimate climb of the day. It was here that Devenyns lost contact with the front of the race as the lead group splintered.

One rider eventually pulled clear, Simon Špilak (Katusha) and set about riding to victory while behind the GC contenders rode their way up to the remnants breakaway and rode in for second.

In the peloton during the stage behind the day’s breakaway, the team concentrated on getting Nikias Arndt into the best possibile position at the base of the final climb. As the climb started he was well placed near the front but he gradually succumbed to the fast pace and dropped behind the dwindling group. Arndt was eventually the first Team Giant-Shimano rider home in 39th place after putting up a strong fight and only losing 4’25″ to the stage winner.

Team Giant-Shimano coach Lionel Marie said after the stage: “There was a really fast start to the stage with everyone having the same idea of getting in the break and this nervousness caused a large crash in the bunch. Unfortunately we had four guys in there and although they finished the stage safely, Johannes [Fröhlinger] and Reinardt [Janse van Rensburg] will need to see our team medical expert here to make sure everything is OK.

“Dries did well to get himself into the move and to make sure that we had someone out front was important today as behind we could concentrate on getting into a good position for the final climbs. The guys worked really well together to make sure that Nikias was in position for the hills and then he rode strongly on the climbs and wasn’t far of making the front group. In the end the pace was too much for him uphill but I am impressed with how he was climbing.

“We will hopefully have another chance tomorrow to race for a sprint and we will make a plan for this today and see how the guys who crashed are feeling tomorrow.”