The World Champion is just seven seconds off the podium ahead of the first uphill finish of the race.
Julian Alaphilippe, Davide Ballerini, Mark Cavendish, Tim Declercq, Mikkel Honoré and Yves Lampaert, combined for a strong team time trial of Deceuninck – Quick-Step on stage 3 of the Tour of Britain, which at the end of the day brought an important shake-up of the general classification, despite the route being only 18.2 kilometers in length.
The Wolfpack produced a quality ride on the hilly course between Llandeilo and the National Botanic Garden of Wales, coming through the checkpoint with the fastest time, which put our squad on course for a good result on the stage. At the finish, the four remaining riders posted a time of 20:39 to go top of the leaderboard for three seconds, where our riders remained until their result was bettered by Ineos Grenadiers, the last team on the course.
That time of 20:39, courtesy of an average speed close to 53km/h, netted a solid second for Deceuninck – Quick-Step, helping both Julian Alaphilippe and Mikkel Honoré move up in the rankings, where they both sit in the top five, which bodes well ahead of the race’s hardest stage, according to sports director Geert Van Bondt: “It was hard, the guys did a nice team effort. We had a good time trial and everything went smoothly until the split, but unfortunately, we lost then lost both Tim and Ballero, and the speed dropped a big in the final kilometers. We didn’t take the win, but two of our riders are up there on the GC, which is promising going into Wednesday’s long and hard stage.”
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