Yury Trofimov was one of the most active riders in the Criterium du Dauphiné and came away from the race with a stage victory. Even in the final stage, the Russian was on the attack and he now heads into his final block of training for the Tour de France with a boosted confidence.

With everything to play for on the final day, there was plenty of racing action in stage 8 of the 2014 Critérium du Dauphiné. At 132 km the stage began in Megève and includes 3-rated climbs before bringing the race to an uphill conclusion on the cat-1 Courchevel le Praz. Team Katusha’s Iurii Trofimov made the effort to go in the day’s break once again. He finished 13th today, 1 minute and 44 seconds behind the stage winner Mikel Nieve.

"First of all I want to say that I am satisfied with my performance here in Dauphiné," he said. "I consider this race as a test and preparation to the Tour de France. For me the main thing was to find my current level of fitness and to feel the racing rhythm. I wanted to improve my shape in the second part of the race and I did it.

"Today was another hard day, especially for me after yesterday’s efforts in the breakaway. But I feel my form is coming up day by day. After this Dauphiné I will have one more training set in the mountains of around 10 – 12 days and then I go to the Tour de France."

A large break of 23 riders went clear with Trofimov, as well as third place GC rider Andrew Talansky. At only 39-seconds behind leader Alberto Contador, Talansky posed a real threat to the yellow jersey when the gap went well over three minutes and the 25-year old American rider became the virtual leader of the race.

Contador’s Tinkoff-Saxo squad teamed up with Christopher Froome’s Sky riders to bring back the break. With less than 25 km to go race leader Alberto Contador attacked this group and set out the long task of bridging across to Talansky’s group in a solo effort. Despite picking off riders one-by-one, Contador couldn’t bring the gap down enough to maintain the lead, and on the final day Andrew Talansky (Garmin-Sharp) earned the biggest win in his cycling career at 27-seconds ahead of the Spaniard. Jurgen Van Den Broeck (Lotto-Belisol) took the final spot on the general classification podium. Iurii Trofimov became the best Katusha’s rider in GC with 16th place.

The stage win went to Mikel Nieve of Team Sky. Just behind him at 3- and 5-seconds were Romain Bardet (AG2R La Mondiale) and Adam Yates of Orica-GreenEdge. 

"I think we can be proud of the team’s performance at the Criterium du  Dauphiné," added sports director Dmitry Konyshev. "We won 2 stages and were very close to one more victory. In general, the team was very active and successful.

"But the main thing is our keys riders who will represent Katusha at the Tour de France showed a very high level. They still have to spend some time in training to be 100% ready for the Tour."

I

t was a tremendously successful week of racing for Team Katusha. Back-to-back wins from Iurii Trofimov and Simon Špilak on stages four and 5 were the highlights with podium finishes for Trofimov and Egor Silin ranking high on the success scale, too. In addition team riders participated in breakaways almost every day, making for an exciting 2014 Critérium du Dauphiné. Team Katusha now ranks fifth in the UCI WorldTour.