BMC hoped to set up Sebastian Lander for glory in the rain-soaked final bunch sprint of the Tour of Austria. However, the Dane nearly went down in a crash and failed to come away with a result.

Past Danish national road champion Sebastian Lander of the BMC Racing Team finished 12th on rain-slickened streets of Vienna on the final stage of the Tour of Austria Sunday. The mostly flat, 122.8-kilometer race comprised 66.8 km from Podersdorf am Neusiedler See to the Austrian capital, where 10 laps of 5.6 km was completed.

A strong thunderstorm swept in with four laps remaining, creating conditions dangerous enough that race officials decided to take the finishing time with one lap to go. Marco Haller (Katusha Team) won the stage ahead of Jacopo Guarnieri (Astana Pro Team) and Raymond Kreder (Garmin-Sharp).

The BMC Racing Team finished only four riders after Rick Zabel came down with a fever after Saturday's individual time trial. Two of them, Brent Bookwalter (18th) and Larry Warbasse (20th), were in the top 20 as British national road champion Peter Kennaugh (Team Sky) won the race.

"It was a really chaotic finish with the hard rain," sport director Jackson Stewart said. "Our plan was to set Lander up and try in the sprint. But he had a little tangle in the last couple of hundred meters with some other riders, but thankfully he didn't crash."