The first mountain stage of this year's edition of the Criterium du Dauphine was a section over 161 kilometers from Digne-les-Bains to Pra-Loup. There were four climbs and a mountaintop finish on the program. As the main difficulty of the day, first the Col d'Allos and after the famous descent the climb up to Pra-Loup had to be conquered in the final 36 kilometers.

With an attack on the penultimate climb, Romain Bardet (AG2R) secured the victory as a soloist. The new overall leader Tejay van Garderen (BMC) was ranked second and Chris Froome (Sky) third. With Dominik Nerz and Jose Mendes, two BORA – ARGON 18 climbing specialists had a rough day and they had to let the favorites go already on the climb to the Col d'Allos. Paul Voss and Emanuel Buchmann reached the finish iin 32nd and 33rd respectively. Both moved into the Top 30 in the overall ranking.

"The stage went according to our plans – but obviously not in terms of the results. We surely didn’t want to lose so much time with Dominik and Jose today. But that can happen. We know that there may be some bad days after a long training period at the altitude training camp. That doesn't worry us at all, because we are still in the phase of building up the form for the Tour de France. We assume that it will be better in the next few days already”, says Sports Director Enrico Poitschke.

"We are satisfied with the way the stage went. Jan [Barta] and Bartosz [Huzarski] have done a good job and they delivered the team in a very good position on the penultimate climb. Then they should save energy for the coming days. The riders who support Dominik and Jose in the mountains, all rode a good race. Paul, Emanuel, Cristiano [Salerno] and Björn [Thurau] should go to the maximum today and they have delivered a good performance", Poitschke continues.