Katusha had two riders in the top 10 on the day as the Critérium du Dauphiné ended with a summit finish at Risoul on stage 8: Joaquím Rodriguez ended in 7th position, 49” off the winner Alessandro De Marchi (Cannondale); Daniel Moreno, leader of Katusha Team for this competition, was right behind him, in 8th position, with the same gap as ‘Purito’.

Thanks to this performance, Moreno was able to finish on the podium: Katusha’s Spanish rider closed the race in third position, 2’12” behind the winner Chris Froome (Sky).

“I’m very happy with this podium,” said Moreno on the Katusha website. “I have to thank the whole team, they did a great job, especially Rodriguez: He’s our leader, but today he gave me a huge help to pass Michael Rogers (Saxo-Tinkoff) on general classification. It rained a lot, so it wasn’t easy, but in the end we managed to reach this goal. We’re satisfied with our performance: we’re not in our best shape, we came to Dauphiné in order to get ready for the Tour de France, and despite this we managed to take this important podium that gives us strong motivations to continue this way.”

The Katusha team is scheduled to remain in France to do some recce tours prior to the Tour, Moreno said.

“Tonight we stay here because tomorrow we want to test the 17th stage of the Tour, the individual time trial. Rodriguez is very motivated to do a great job in La Grande Boucle. He is working hard, and the team is training too in order to help him to take the best possible result.”