Brent Bookwalter finished fifth on Thursday's uphill finish at the Larry H. Miller Tour of Utah to move into third place overall with three stages of the race to go.

Bookwalter, runner-up on Wednesday and third on Tuesday, said his teammates set him up well as the peloton arrived in the final kilometers of the 204.4-km race.

"The team did an amazing job again," Bookwalter said. "They executed the plan for a world-class sprinter. Although I feel like I have done a decent job of sprinting the past couple of days in the smaller groups, today, when the group was a little bigger, you saw that I am not a pure sprinter - tactically and also physically."

Eric Young (Optum presented by Kelly Benefit Strategies) took the stage win while Jure Kocjan (Team SmartStop), in third place, assumed the overall lead from Kiel Reijnen (UnitedHealthcare Pro Cycling Team). Bookwalter finished two seconds after Young and is one of four riders sitting four seconds off the lead.

Sport Director Jackson Stewart said it was nice to see the entirety of the BMC Racing Team involved in setting up the lead out.

"We had the young guys like Kilian Frankiny and Manuel Senni learning from yesterday and seeing what they had to do," he said. "(Taylor) Phinney was there today, so really we had everyone. Sprinting can be a little bit of a gamble at times. There was a lull there and maybe we just did not finish it off right."

Friday's race is a short one - 89.1 km on laps of a circuit through the streets of Salt Lake City - and features 1,500 meters of climbing.

"Physically, I feel really good," Bookwalter said. "I think I have spent a little bit of physical and mental energy fighting out these finishes the past few days that maybe other GC (general classification) guys have not. I still want to take it day-by-day. The yellow jersey is still in play for tomorrow and then we have two hard mountain days."