Brent Bookwalter tried his hand in a breakaway on the queen stage of the Tour of Austria but was unable to match stage winner Dayer Quintana on the steep Kitzbüheler Horn. Further back, his team captain Ben Hermans suffered and slipped out of the top 10 in the overall standings.

Brent Bookwalter capitalized on his day in the breakaway to be the BMC Racing Team's best finisher, in 18th place, on a rain-soaked mountain-top finish on the Kitzbüheler Horn. The 206-kilometer race from Bad Ischl to the ski station at the top of the Kitzbüheler Horn culminated with a leg-breaking, 7.7-kilometer ascent averaging 12 percent gradient.

Bookwalter was joined by nine others in the breakaway that began as the race crested the top of the first categorized climb, about 180 km from the finish. The escapees enjoyed a nearly five-minute lead before splintering on the final climb to the top.

Movistar Team's Dayer Quintana, younger brother of Giro d'Italia winner Nairo Quintana, soloed to the stage win out of the breakaway, 54 seconds ahead of Damiano Caruso (Cannondale Pro Cycling). Pete Kennaugh (Team Sky) finished third, 54 seconds back, and held onto the race lead.

BMC Racing Team's Ben Hermans finished 31st on the day, 3:50 back, and slid from fifth to 20th overall while remaining the team's best-placed rider, 3:31 back of Kennaugh. Bookwalter's effort moved him from 43rd to 29th overall, 5:01 behind.

"The weather was ugly at the end," Bookwalter said. "It started raining with about 30 or 40 kilometers to go and just kept getting harder and harder and the temperatures were dropping. It got pretty grim.

"I felt OK, but it was not my best or my worst day. I thought I did a good job taking myself in the breakaway and had a plan to basically do a time trial all the way to the top. But I was lacking the power and some of the lightness to go with some of the smaller, climber-type guys."

"The plan was to have either Brent or Larry [Warbasse] in the breakaway so Yannick (Eijssen) and Ben could have a chance to climb for the general classification," sports director Jackson Stewart said. "We thought that if the break went you could win out of it and that is what happened with Quintana."