As a team mostly made up of sprinters, Team Giant-Shimano was not expected to play a dominant role in the Criterium du Dauphiné but they ended up as just one of five teams to win a stage. Despite ending the race anonymously, they leave the race with a feeling of satisfaction.

The final stage of the Critérium du Dauphiné was always going to be a tough one for Team Giant-Shimano with another tough hilly stage on the cards, and this was made harder by an extremely attacking stage and a real fight from start to finish.

By the end of the day, Johannes Fröhlinger was the team’s highest finisher in 54th place, finishing together with Chad Haga, Thomas Damuseau and Dries Devenyns in the main groupetto at over 25 minutes down on the stage winner.

The day got off to a fast start, much like the past few days, and it was a large group that formed on the first climb of the day – the Côte de Domancy. Twenty three riders joined forced ahead of the peloton including several riders placed highly in the general classification. This meant that the pace was fraught behind the escapees as riders tried to keep the gap from growing too far.

There was no rest to be had as the fight continued on the second climb of the day where the GC leaders attacked on the second climb of the day in a bid to spark a counter attack. This pulled several riders clear including the leading two riders overall. This was once again too much for the Team Giant-Shimano riders to follow and they joined the grupetto forming behind.

At the front of the race, Andrew Talansky (Garmin-Sharp) did enough to hold on out front and wrestle the yellow jersey off the shoulders of overnight leader Alberto Contador. Behind the head of the race, the guys all finished within or just behind the first grupetto on the road and they can look back on a successful week which despite the crashes and hard points has been largely positive and a strong week of racing for their development.

Nikias Arndt, winner of the third stage gave his thoughts on the past eight days of racing: 

"It has been a nice week with nice weather, but also with the fair share of hard days too. The victory is a real highlight and we all enjoyed it, raising the spirits and keeping us going even after a few hard crashes.

“Thankfully no one is badly hurt and can recover after this before the next objectives. We worked hard and rode well together and we should all come out of this in good shape for the championships in two weeks time.”

Team Giant-Shimano coach Lionel Marie added:

“It has been a good week yes but hard too. It was a shame to lose some of the guys on the way but it was important not to push through needlessly.

“The win with Nikias was great and when you win as a team like that it raises everyone as the whole team played a part. It is great for Nikias too and will help to bring him on another level knowing he can win in races like this.

“Overall it was a hard week with some tough mountains to finish and even though the guys finished in the grupetto today they made sure that they finished and got the racing kilometres in which is important for the races to come.”