Brittany witnessed a historic day in the team time trial between Vannes and Plumelec.  Huge crowds gathered along the 28 kilometer route to encourage the teams that were on a mission to battle for top positions.  Victory smiled on Tejay Van Garderen’s BMC team who tapped out a winning time that was a small second ahead of yellow jersey Chris Froome and his Sky team, while being four seconds ahead of Quintana’s third placed Movistar team.   

In this battle of the bigwigs, the IAM Cycling team still showed itself to be up to the challenge by clocking an admirable 6th best time, thirty-eight seconds behind the winner, and just three seconds outside of the top five.  Given the quality of the field, this proved to be a successful day for the Swiss team, and allowed Mathias Frank to move up to 20th place on the general classification having taken some time on his rivals who are also looking for a final place in the top-10 overall.

Hot off the ride, Frank, the leader of the Swiss team, was satisfied with their day. 

“It was the last difficult day of the week, and we really rode as a time trial team.  The guys worked very well together, and I am happy to get to the end of the week despite the crashes and the lost time.  Everyone has ridden his hardest and given the best of himself.  We managed to finish well in spite of the fact that we’ve been pretty unlucky. 

"After the rest day, we will be ready to attack the mountains.  I have been feeling pretty good in recent days, and I will give my maximum in the days to come.  We will then take stock afterwards.”

Motivated along with the rest of his teammates, Sylvain Chavanel also noted how well the group rode together in spite of the difficulty of this hilly course that finished at the top of a stiff climb. 

“We look anything but ridiculous after this time trial.  We managed ourselves very well and no one was more powerful than the other. We started with the objective of getting Mathias Frank, our leader for the overall, in a position to gain time.  We succeeded at that, and so we are left with very few regrets.”