The 7th and queen stage of the Criterium du Dauphine would be a spectacular day for MTN-Qhubeka p/b Samsung. Louis Meintjes put in a phenomenal ride to claim 3rd place on the stage, only beaten by stage victor Chris Froome (Team Sky) and Tejay van Garderen (BMC Racing).

All this excitement only came after Daniel Teklehaimanot all but wrapped up the King of the Mountians competition. Teklehaimanot and Meintjes were part of the large break of the day that had 5 category 1 climbs before them. Teklehaimanot took maximum points on the first 3 cat 1 climbs while Meintjes picked up a few points himself to move into 2nd place in the Polka Dot jersey competition. Teklehaimanot only needs to complete tomorrow’s final stage to win the team's first ever World Tour leaders jersey.

Once the excitement of the KOM battle settled somewhat, there was still the stage honours up for grabs, and what a spectacle it would be. It came down to final 12km and the last 2 cat 1 climbs where 4 riders had 30" on the group that contained Meintjes, Pierre Rolland (Eurpocar), Pawel Polijanski (Tinkoff-Saxo) and Alexis Vulliermoz (AG2R La Mondiale) with the group of GC favourites a further 1'30" down the road.

The gap between the 4 front runners and the GC group quickly got compressed under the hand of Team Sky on the steeper gradients. When Froome and van Garderen attacked with 4km to go, it resulted in the race coming all back together. Froome and van Garderen then surged ahead with 3km to go and Meintjes joined Benat Intxausti (Movistar) in the pursuit of the 2 leaders.

Froome would later gap van Garderen to take a good win but it was the American that would don the yellow leader’s jersey. Behind them Meintjes and Intxausti would be able to hold on to compete for the final stage podium spot, Metinjes just edging Intaxusti for 3rd. It was carnage behind as the rest of the favourites came home in ones and twos.

"Today was a very good stage for me as it had a lot of climbing. I was really happy to be able to get a good result today for myself and for the team. We also got a whole lot of mountian points with Daniel so that was also great and made today a very good day for our team," Meintjes said.

"I am very happy with my performance here at the Dauphine which started on the first day when I took the climbers jersey. I tried to make the break as often as possible to collect the points and today was the big day so I was happy to make the important break today as well. The climbers jersey is a special jersey for me, since I was a kid I always thought about winning the climbers jersey in the big races," Teklehaimanot said.

"Looking at the course today, I wanted to be in the break and score some points. I'm glad that I've made it. This is the first distinctive jersey for MTN-Qhubeka in a World Tour race. When I was young and watching the Tour de France, I was always more excited by the fight for the polka dot jersey than the yellow.

"It's fantastic to know that I'll be riding the Tour de France as well. It's very exciting. All the riders in the world want to do the Tour. I hope I'll have a chance to race for the polka dot jersey as well as here. One day with this jersey at the Tour would be enough for me. It won't be easy but I'm prepared to working hard."