Alberto Contador and his Tinkoff-Saxo team took somewhat of a blow during the team time trial on stage 9 at the Tour de France, losing valuable seconds to stage winners BMC, and more importantly to yellow jersey Chris Froome (Team Sky).
Contador is hunting the Giro-Tour double, however, he already needs to make up time on his rivals after the first week of racing. The Spaniard currently sits in fifth place overall, 1:03 behind Froome and 51 seconds behind Tejay van Garderen (BMC), a rider that Contador will not discount for a top overall placing at the end of the Tour.
“He’s a rider with tremendous qualities as we all could see in the Dauphiné, where he showed that he’s also strong on the climbs,” Contador said.
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The team time trial didn’t go perfectly for Contador and his teammates, having lost seven seconds to both BMC and Team Sky in the first third of the 28-kilometre course. “We tried, I think we got a good time, and now it’s time to rest. I think we did a decent time,” Contador said.
After tackling the uphill roads towards Monterblanc and its descent, Tinkoff-Saxo lost another 10 seconds to Team Sky, who were leading BMC by one second. Shortly before reaching the top of the climb to La Croix Peinte, the gap to Team Sky had ballooned out to 30 seconds.
In the final two kilometres up the Côte de Caloudal climb the five remaining men from Contador’s team managed to take back a handful of seconds. The Spaniard led the team in that included Peter Sagan, Roman Kreuziger, Ivan Basso and Rafal Majka.
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