ORICA-GreenEDGE has obtained the fifth time in the Critérium du Dauphiné behind winner BMC, who completed the course 23 seconds faster. BMC, the third team to start in the team time trial, took the lead early on in the day.

The Australian outfit was the 13th team to start the 24.5 kilometres long team time trial and did so with eight riders. OGE was off to a strong start and managed to uphold this throughout the course. Though relatively short, the parcours proved to be a technical and tricky one. As the course was characterised by its hilly route, the riders had no time to recover between the climbs.

The team kept a fast pace, but was thoughtful not to lose each other on the course. OGE’s intermediate time was a nice and fast 16’16” and they completed the course in 30’21” with an average speed of 48.435 kilometres per hour.

Sports director Laurenzo Lapage is pleased with today’s results: “The team we brought to the Dauphiné does not consist of our time trial experts. Knowing that, I think we can be very content with today’s results. Losing only 23 seconds on BMC on a parcours such as this, and looking at who we left behind us in today’s classification, we can conclude that we did really well.

“Though the course was tricky and hard, we managed to keep the team together today. The riders were able to stick together until five kilometres before the finish which is really important in a time trial. You want to stay together for as long as possible.

“For tomorrow we definitely want to try to get a rider in the breakaway. The finale really suits a rider such as Simon Gerrans so we’ll definitely try and take control of the race.”