The ninth stage of the Tour de France was a team time trial on a challenging course over 28 kilometers from Vannes to Plumelec. The finale included the climb to the Cote de Cadoudal, an ascent with an average slope of 6% on the last two kilometers.

BORA – ARGON 18 again delivered a good team performance and was the best wildcard team in this discipline, as in almost all WorldTour races in recent years. With 32:15 minutes, BMC set the fastest time of the day, Team Sky defended the yellow jersey for Chris Froome.

Of the 22 teams, BORA – ARGON 18 was 13th with a times loss of 1:31 minutes. Before tomorrow's first rest day, Dominik Nerz thus confirms his position in the general classification and he is now in 26th place.

"The goal was to finish in the Top10 today and I think it would have been possible. The course was very challenging and unfortunately the team started too cautious. The descents weren’t tackled aggressively enough and so you lose second by second. In the end we lacked only seven seconds for the day's goal. Now we look forward to the rest day and hope that the riders will recover well. On Tuesday we are going into the next stages that are a lot different from the first ones. The mountains will suit us more than the first week", said Enrico Poitschke, Sport Director of BORA – ARGON 18. 

"Unfortunately I could not help much today. I did not have good legs. But I think we have survived it. And that is not too bad," Nerz told radsport-news.com.

"For me it was not up-and-down, but rather a down-down with the equipment problems in the time trial and the heavy crash. I'm just happy that the rest day comes now."